Ground penetrating radar - revisionist claim

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
User avatar
Sam H.
Member
Posts: 1975
Joined: 19 Sep 2002, 22:21
Location: Pittsburgh, PA

Ground penetrating radar - revisionist claim

#1

Post by Sam H. » 12 Apr 2004, 22:51

http://www.ety.com/HRP/rev/treblinka-lie.htm

Any comments on this BS ... is there any legitamacy to this or is it just pure revisionist propoganda?

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#2

Post by David Thompson » 13 Apr 2004, 03:14

Sam H. -- You asked:
is there any legitamacy to this or is it just pure revisionist propoganda?
The articles are just some the opinion of some guy, with neither supporting evidence in the article nor links to such evidence elsewhere. Since that's all there is, why post a link to the article at all?


User avatar
Deterance
Member
Posts: 1248
Joined: 26 Apr 2003, 04:10
Location: Republic of Texas

#3

Post by Deterance » 13 Apr 2004, 05:17

I dont know about the Treblinka site, but ground penetrating radar has confirmed the existance of a mass grave in Jedwabne, Poland.

This massacare was the subject of the Book Neighbors by Jan Gross. Interestingly, the ground radar confirmed that the mass grave contained roughly 200 victims. This is far smaller than Gross's number of 1600 stated in his book. 200 victims is far more in line with pre war census.

There is also dispute about who perpetrated the massacare (Germans or Poles or perhaps both)

Here is a link to several articles presenting the Polish side of the event. Of course some of the authors maybe biased...just like Gross may have been working towards a pre determined conclusion.

http://www.IYP.org/polish/history/antyp ... x_Jedwabne
Last edited by Deterance on 13 Apr 2004, 05:32, edited 2 times in total.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

#4

Post by michael mills » 13 Apr 2004, 05:20

I couple of years ago, I had a meeting with Richard Craigie, the person referred to in the newspaper articles, subsequent to the appearance of the articles.

He had contacted me on the basis of the work I had done providing comments to David Irving on one of the expert opinions prepared by the defence in his court action against Lipstadt.

Craigie explained to me the process he had carried out at the Treblinka memorial site, and showed me some of the ground-radar printouts.

I gave him the following advice:

1. Before rushing into print with sweeping claims, he should have the print-outs analysed by an acknowledged expert, so as to substantiate the claim that there had been no soil disturbance in the areas swept by the ground radar.

2. He should precisely document the areas in the Treblinka memorial subjected by him to ground-radar, so as to show that they were areas that have been claimed by historians as mass-graves, and not some other area.

3. After carrying out the above, he should limit his claims to what the evidenced actually showed, ie that there could not have been any mass-graves in the areas subjected to ground-radar. He should not claim that there were no mass-graves at all in the Treblinka area, since there could have been such graves in areas that he did not subject to ground-radar.

I did not meet Craigie subsequently, and do not know what has become of the work he did.

alf
Member
Posts: 1343
Joined: 09 Oct 2003, 11:45
Location: Australia

#5

Post by alf » 13 Apr 2004, 16:20

I place no value in Krege's "science", the fact he was part of the Adelaide Institute speaks volumes about his scientific objectivity and total lack thererof. The Adelaide Institute was found guilty of racism by the Australian Human Rights Commision..

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/austral ... c-00.shtml
Pursuant to section 25Z(1)(b) I make the following determinations:

I find the complaint substantiated;
I declare that the respondent Dr Fredrick Toben, representing the Adelaide Institute, has engaged in conduct rendered unlawful by section 18C of this Act in the publication of material racially vilificatory of Jewish people, on the Adelaide Institute’s Internet site. This conduct is rendered unlawful by Part IIA of the Act;
I declare that the respondent Dr Fredrick Toben, representing the Adelaide Institute, should remove the contents of the Adelaide Institute website from the World Wide Web and not re-publish the content of that website in public elsewhere;
I declare that the respondent Dr Fredrick Toben, representing the Adelaide Institute, should make a statement of apology to Mr Jeremy Jones and those members of the Jewish community of Australia whom he represented in this complaint. That apology should be made in writing to Mr Jones, and further should appear on the home page of the Adelaide Institute website. The terms of the apology are to be as follows:
"I hereby unreservedly and unconditionally apologise to you and to the Australian Jewish community for having published materials inciting hatred against the Jewish people in contravention of the Racial Discrimination Act. I undertake that neither I nor any employee or agent of mine (actual or ostensible) will publish any such material in the future and that all such material which is presently published by me, or by any employee or agent of mine (actual or ostensible) in any print or electronic media (including the Internet) will forthwith be withdrawn from publication".
With that in mind, Krege goes the same way as Leuchter , and so many other "experts", their anti semitism blinkers them, second rate minds that feed garbage to other second rate minds.

As Michael mentioned his assistence to David Irving its worth noting the Judges decison on Irving from his court case
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irv ... 13-01.html, the whole transcript is most fascinating reading.
13.167 The answer to that question requires me to decide whether (I am paraphrasing section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952) the failure on the part of the Defendants to prove the truth of those charges materially injures the reputation of Irving, in view of the fact that the other defamatory charges made against him have been proved to be justified. The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism. In my judgment the charges against Irving which have been proved to be true are of sufficient gravity for it be clear that the failure to prove the truth of the matters set out in paragraph 13.165 above does not have any material effect on Irving's reputation.

13.168 In the result therefore the defence of justification succeeds
What was found on Irving (and upheld in his Appeal and second Appeal) applies to the whole Holocaust Denial field, Krege is merely one small part of it, psuedo science peddled for second rate minds who wallow in racism.

User avatar
Vikki
Forum Staff
Posts: 3300
Joined: 08 Jul 2003, 02:35
Location: Amerika

#6

Post by Vikki » 14 Apr 2004, 04:34

Michael,

Do you have any information/data on the effectiveness of the technique's results in uses such as this? I know that GPR has had some success in the location of solid underground features (building foundations, etc.), but I understand that it's less effective on softer organic matter.

michael mills wrote:I couple of years ago, I had a meeting with Richard Craigie, the person referred to in the newspaper articles, subsequent to the appearance of the articles.

He had contacted me on the basis of the work I had done providing comments to David Irving on one of the expert opinions prepared by the defence in his court action against Lipstadt.

Craigie explained to me the process he had carried out at the Treblinka memorial site, and showed me some of the ground-radar printouts.

I gave him the following advice:

1. Before rushing into print with sweeping claims, he should have the print-outs analysed by an acknowledged expert, so as to substantiate the claim that there had been no soil disturbance in the areas swept by the ground radar.

2. He should precisely document the areas in the Treblinka memorial subjected by him to ground-radar, so as to show that they were areas that have been claimed by historians as mass-graves, and not some other area.

3. After carrying out the above, he should limit his claims to what the evidenced actually showed, ie that there could not have been any mass-graves in the areas subjected to ground-radar. He should not claim that there were no mass-graves at all in the Treblinka area, since there could have been such graves in areas that he did not subject to ground-radar.

I did not meet Craigie subsequently, and do not know what has become of the work he did.

michael mills
Member
Posts: 8999
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 13:42
Location: Sydney, Australia

#7

Post by michael mills » 14 Apr 2004, 05:09

I am sorry, I have no expertise in ground radar, and I have no idea what it can or cannot do.

In fact, until I was approached by Richard Craigie I had never even heard of ground radar.

Since I had no expertise, and it did not appear that Mr craigie had all that much either, I suggested that the first step was to consult an expert who could provide an accurate interpretation of the ground profiles that he had obtained.

I personally do not want to get involved in this particular controversy. In theory, I think that actual physical investigation of the sites on which extermination camps are believed to have existed, including the most sophisticated modern techniques, is something that should be promoted by all means. But such investigations should be done by totally neutral experts with no links to either side.

LionAxe
Member
Posts: 3
Joined: 14 May 2006, 01:30
Location: Sweden

#8

Post by LionAxe » 17 May 2006, 21:34

Krege is a bonified pseudo-scientist, if even worthy of that label.
I mean, the claims made such as:
"Ground radar shows the soil at Treblinka has been undisturbed for millions of years."

Where was this study done, in Antarctica?
These great minds (gagging) must have forgotten about Treblinka's periglacial situation less than 12,000 years ago, its 1500 years of agricultural history, the uncontroversial fact that the land was farmed from 1943 to 1946 (gave you the link to the nazi-photos of excavators at treblinka).

So, that particular claim is nullified by a five-year olds common sense.

Image

Here's a geomodel, in it you can see of the scan that the upper most horizontal bands represent backfilled and compacted fill material. The white-wavey areas are the undisturbed soils below and on either side of the trenches.
http://geomodel.com/

Here's the scam, erhm I ment scan, offered by NAFCASH.

Image

Their scan has similar banding in the upper part and wavey white and polychrome areas below. If the Geomodel scan is a not too unreasonable guide it would obviously appear that the uppermost couple of meters in the nafcash scan might actually represent backfilled, compacted fill.
Which is even more proof of the generally accepted history of Treblinka and thus entirely contrary to the claim made by nafcash.

My guess is that they know this too so hence they are content with just blowing smoke up peoples arses like they do with Dr. Shermer etc.
The nafcash homepage is relatively quiet about any data from Krege's research, they seem more interested with whining, using ad hominems against Michael Shermer (know there's a researcher).

The very nature of the challenge, that you simply MUST find at least 870,000 graves/bodies, clearly shows how insincere it is in essence, how intellectually corrupt it is. If I would claim that 2900 people died on 9/11 and you say you'll give me $1,000,000 if I can prove it by showing you some 2900 bodies, you'd be offering the same line of challenge as these irrational people are. I doubt that there even is an "National Association bla bla of skeptics and forensics".
Rather it simply seems to be just a little the usual bunch of anti-semites, patting each other on the back and stopping only just a tiny smidgin short of screaming Heil Hitler here and there.

Finding graves of people burnt to cinders??? Please give me a break, these guys know this can't be done, so they forms this bogus "challenge".
Read Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things". Segment/Part 4 is about pseudo-history and Holocaust deniers in particular, illuminating especially for antis visiting SF.

Also, I inquired with the IRS to find out more about NAFCASH, as a non-profit organization it should be there, but there was no trace of it at all, hmmm??

They are using the oft erronous lineage logic route, let me demonstrate a direct example as it seems to me.
The level of proof demanded by this "alleged skeptical website" would eliminate the possiblility that Hitler existed per se. In other words, there is essentially no body (save for the claim that there is a portion of a skull in a Russian archive), hence by that logic Hitler never existed either?!?. Treblinka never existed because Hitler never existed, lol. It's laughable at best.
So in conclusion, without the additional data I cannot judge the Krege's claims, and since -99 it hasn't been progressing has it, heh. He even admits that there has to be further scanning done. (no doubt it's because he discovered he hadn't used the damn thing correct in the first place).
Also, given that all the credible evidence of which I am aware, which predates the Nafcash claim, supports the existence of a Reinhard Death Camp at Treblinka, I must admit that there isn't a serious engineer/scientist who would embrace this superficial hand-job as it is.

You see, a standard technique with the GPR would be to excavate a couple of trenches, to maybe 1.5 metre depth... that's what they oft do in the normal archeological fields. This could easily confirm soil disturbance BUT... it would involve rental of a ditch digger for at least a day... costing around a $1000.
Authorities are hard pressed to allow excavation at these sites, so I'm frankly not sure it happend, it sure as hell wasn't conducted as the creater of the GPR equipment had built it for.

I wonder what the heck they were using these excavators for in -42?, especially since the place is sooo untouched.
http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/excavators.htm

Howdy!
Last edited by LionAxe on 17 May 2006, 21:54, edited 1 time in total.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#9

Post by David Thompson » 17 May 2006, 21:49

LionAxe -- Welcome to the forum. Our rules are posted at:

H&WC Section Rules
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

and we enjoy sourced, informed and civil discussions here. Please note that we appreciate a scholarly approach in the research sections of the forum, and discourage flamebait, taunting posts, etc.

LionAxe
Member
Posts: 3
Joined: 14 May 2006, 01:30
Location: Sweden

#10

Post by LionAxe » 17 May 2006, 21:56

David Thompson wrote:LionAxe -- Welcome to the forum. Our rules are posted at:

H&WC Section Rules
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

and we enjoy sourced, informed and civil discussions here. Please note that we appreciate a scholarly approach in the research sections of the forum, and discourage flamebait, taunting posts, etc.
Thank you, I cleaned the post up a little on the latter notes as so.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#11

Post by David Thompson » 18 May 2006, 00:21

Thanks, LionAxe.

GordonD
New member
Posts: 1
Joined: 25 Jul 2007, 13:16
Location: Adelaide SA

#12

Post by GordonD » 25 Jul 2007, 13:31

Australia's parliament has never passed a law specifically banning Holocaust denial in the way Germany's has. But the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) has interpreted the laws under which it operates to effectively mean it is illegal. The fact that the Adelaide Institute has been found guilty of racism and has been ordered to remove material from its web site doesn't tell us anything about the quality or lack thereof of the material, only of the the willingness of representatives of the Jewish community to pursue and punish anyone who says things they don't like by any means, and the willingness of the HREOC to interpret the law to allow that to happen.

But what is convincing that Krege is talking nonsense is LionAxe's argument that you can actually see the things in the GPR picture that Krege claims aren't there.

Ship of Fools
Member
Posts: 126
Joined: 18 Jul 2006, 08:02
Location: Europe

#13

Post by Ship of Fools » 25 Jul 2007, 19:38

Given we have no idea where in Treblinka this particular scan was taken it would be foolish to ascribe a mass grave in that particular scan, especially when we have no idea what a scan of undisturbed soil in the vicinity looks like. Presumably Krege did scan undisturbed parts in the area and found no significant differences between that and any of the areas supposed to contain mass graves.

While I appreciate the concerns LionAxe expresses regarding Polish agricultural practices he can rest assured they do not involve 6 meter deep tilling of soil.

Perhaps the best solution would be for concerned persons to perform their own GPR scan of undisturbed soil and the area of the mass graves, present their findings and put this issue finally to rest.

JamesL
Member
Posts: 1649
Joined: 28 Oct 2004, 01:03
Location: NJ USA

#14

Post by JamesL » 25 Jul 2007, 20:01

For what its worth, I live in a very congested area. The local water company routinely uses ground penetrating radar to locate underground piping and other obstructions (old building foundations, etc) before they dig. The operators have a vast amount of experience IN THIS AREA and can usually identify buried things based on their readings as well as their knowledge of the history of the area.

The local police also call on them to search for bodies of murder victims. One operator told me that bodies were easily found because people were generally lazy and only covered the bodies with a yard (or meter) of soil. Granted the remains are not 60-70 years old but they once did identify an old graveyard dating from the American Revolution.

I think the experience of the operator coupled with local knowledge is required for the use of GPR. Our local GPR operators would probably show poor results if we sent them off to Poland.


Edit: spelling
Last edited by JamesL on 26 Jul 2007, 00:23, edited 1 time in total.

Ship of Fools
Member
Posts: 126
Joined: 18 Jul 2006, 08:02
Location: Europe

#15

Post by Ship of Fools » 25 Jul 2007, 22:14

I think the experience of the operator coupled with local knowledge is required for the use of GPR. Our local GPR operators would probably show poor results if we sent them off to Poland.
I see absolutely no evidence for such a conclusion. This single scan from Krege does have at least the effect of sparking off some of the strangest claims.

All that needs to be done is to scan some adjacent farm land and then scan the mass grave area. Can a noticable difference be detected, particular a boundary going from undisturbed to disturbed area? If not, then it might be necessary to verify the technique on a known mass grave.

The benefit of the such study would lie not just in refuting a denier that sod all people have heard of, but to give an archaeological insight into a major historical event.

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”