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Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (1)

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Part 1

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Part 5 (1)

In the previous articles of this series I refuted Mattogno’s arguments against the authenticity and reliability of the 2nd Jäger Report in the first volume of his work about the Einsatzgruppen.

This article and the next one will be dedicated to presenting and discussing some documentary evidence associated to the mass killings reported by Jäger, which is mostly ignored by Mattogno and largely shown for the first time, as far as I know, in a publication written in the English language.



The documents were made available to me by the LCVA (Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybės Archyvas - Lithuanian Central State Archives) in Vilnius, Lithuania. I am authorized to publish these documents under condition that I mention the full name of the institution and the respective archival reference. I am not authorized, and do not intend to, grant anyone else an authorization to publish these documents in any form. Whoever wishes to publish these documents themselves should obtain an authorization to do so from the LCVA. Or better, they should obtain color copies of the documents themselves. The LCVA are quick in responding to requests according to my experience, and they charge only € 1.80 per color copy.

The German conquest of Lithuania in June 1941 caused relatively few military and civilian casualties, due to its briefness. Within 2 days after 22 June 1941 the Germans had already taken Kaunas and Vilnius, and a week later all of Lithuania was in their hands. Soviet troops fought some minor rearguard actions here and there, but mostly retreated as soon as possible behind the old Soviet borders, where they organized a firm resistance. [131] German military killed or missing in action on the whole Eastern Front between 22 and 30 June 1941 amounted to 11,593, [132] so it seems reasonable, considering the scale and period of military operations, to assume that several hundred of these were killed on Lithuanian territory. Soviet military fatalities were certainly much higher, but cannot have exceeded a number in the lower thousands considering the speedy Soviet retreat. Civilian collateral casualties from bombing numbered in the hundreds, [133] and additionally hundreds were killed in reprisals by overly nervous German troops who believed they were being attacked by partisans, [134] or by the Soviet NKVD. [135] All in all, the week of the German conquest caused comparatively little harm to the country and its non-Jewish inhabitants. The Kaunas public pogroms and massacres of Jews starting 25 June 1941 probably claimed more lives than all other violence of the German conquest period together.[136]

What followed, however, was one of the worst horrors of World War II. Between 1941 and 1944 this small country became a graveyard for about 420,000 people – ca. 200,000 Jews, 170,000 Soviet prisoners of war, 50,000 civilian evacuees from other occupied territories and other civilians. [137] The overwhelming majority of the Jews and Soviet POWs perished in 1941/42. The Soviet PoWs mostly perished in camps in or close to the country’s larger cities – about 35,000 in Kaunas, 20,000 in Alytus, 22,000 in Šiauliai, 43,000 in the Vilnius region, 25,000 in the Marijampolė and Vilkaviškis districts, 22,500 – 26,500 in the German-Lithuanian border area and the Klaipėda region.[138] The overwhelming majority of those buried in mass graves littering the Lithuanian countryside, on the other hand, were Jews murdered by Lithuanians on their own initiative or by German mobile killing units and their Lithuanian auxiliaries and collaborators, mainly Jäger’s EK3.

Some of the administrative correspondence related to the 1941 massacres has been recovered and is now held in the LCVA. Most of this correspondence is about public health matters concerning mass graves, which were considered a threat to public health due to leachate that might pollute nearby waters, and it was also seen as undesirable from a public health perspective that the graves should be dug up or the grave areas used as agricultural or pasture land.

In the following tour of Lithuania by mass grave sites, the mentions thereof in administrative correspondence will be correlated with information in the 2nd Jäger Report and other evidence about mass killings that occurred at these sites. For better orientation, here is again the map already shown in Part 1 of this series, where one can see the administrative division of the Generalkommissariat Litauen as of April 1942:
- Stadtkommissariate (City Commissariats) Kaunas(Kauen)-Stadt and Vilnius(Wilna)-Stadt;
- Gebietskommissariat (GBK) Kaunas(Kauen)-Land, consisting of the Kreise (districts or counties; the latter term will be used hereafter) whose Lithuanian names were Kėdainiai, Šakiai, Kaunas, Marijampolė, Vilkaviškis, Lazdijai and Alytus;
- GBK Panevėžys(Ponewesch), consisting of the districts Panevėžys, Biržai, Rokiškis, Ukmergė, Utena and Zarasai.
- GBK Šiauliai (Schaulen), consisting of the districts Tauragė, Kretinga, Mažeikiai, Telšiai, Šiauliai and Raseiniai;
- GBK Vilnius(Wilna)-Land, consisting of the districts Trakai, Vilnius, Švenčionys, Svyriai, Ašmena and Eišiškės. [139]




With one exception the mentioned surviving documentation pertains to the civilian administration and was issued at various administrative levels: the Generalbezirk Litauen, the Stadtkommissariate, the Gebietskommissariate (GBK), the head of each district subordinated to a GBK, and those reporting to these officials. Most of the documents are from the sub-fond R-627-1-150 of the fond R-627, which contains documents pertaining to the Vyriausioji sveikatos valdyba/Hauptgesundheitsverwaltung, the Central/Main Health Administration or Main Health Board (the latter being the term used in the translations) of the Lithuania General District. In these letters the medical officers responsible for the respective districts, and in one case a head of district, responded to inquests from the Main Health Board (or from the respective GBK’s "consulting medical officer", an official of the Main Health Board) about, sometimes among other public health matters, the mass graves located in the respective district, whether these represented a risk to public health and what measures had been taken to avoid or mitigate such risk. The R-627-1-150 collection consists of 73 documents, most of which contain a mention of mass graves. However, I had translated only 15 documents that contain some particulars about the mass graves, like their number, size and/or precise location. Therefore not all of the aforementioned districts are "represented" in the documents that will be shown. In addition to the R-627-1-150 documents I translated or had translated documents from the collections LCVA R500-1-4t.1, LCVA R613-1-10, LCVA R678-1-3 and LCVA R685-5-10.

The documents will be presented according to the administrative subdivision of Lithuania under German occupation (Generalbezirk» city or GBK » districts subordinated to the GBK). Due to the volume of the documentation and related information the presentation will be split in two. In this article I’ll present documents at the administrative levels of the Generalbezirk Litauen, the City Commissariat Kauen-Stadt and the districts pertaining to the GBK Kauen-Land. In the next article, the last of this series, documentation regarding the districts pertaining to the GBK’s Panevėžys(Ponewesch), Šiauliai (Schaulen) and Wilna-Land will be presented.

1. Generalbezirk Litauen

Document no. 1: Letter dated 22.8.1942 sent by the General Commissioner in Kaunas to the City Commissioners and Regional Commissioners in the Generalbezirk Litauen (LCVA R-613-1-10-58).[140]

Having received "very extensive and excellent reports from the Regional Commissioners" about the mass graves in their respective regions, the General Commissioner for Lithuania noted that, while "a large number of mass graves complies with all requirements as concerns the hygienic control of epidemics", another part "doesn’t have the required safety, as the covering soil layer is only very thin". He requested the Regional Commissioners to instruct the Heads of District that measures be taken to remove the problem, and to make sure that the graves were duly marked. In parallel he would also instruct the District Medical Officers through the respective administrative channels, presumably to supervise the process and report about the results. This document suggests a vast amount of preceding correspondence about mass graves in the Lithuania General District, which were obviously a subject of much attention and concern up the highest level of Lithuania’s civil administration under German rule.

2. Stadtkommissariat Kaunas(Kauen)-Stadt

Document no. 2: Letter dated 30 January 1942 from the Kaunas City Sanitary Inspector to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 10-11).[141]

The graveyards mentioned in this letter include one in the Šančiaieldership, where German soldiers and Soviet prisoners of war were buried, and which was mostly overfilled. The largest POW camp in or close to Šančiai was Fort VI, aka the "hospital" ("Lazarett") due to its enormous mortality rate. [142] As the Fort VI camp was soon overfilled, further camps were installed in Kaunas, including two (jointly known as camp "G") in Šančiai. [143] After Soviet POWs had died like flies and their labor force thus been lost, Jewish workers from the Kaunas ghetto had to take their place. One of these, Meir Yelin, described camp "G" as worse than Dante´s Inferno, with numerous prisoners lying in coffins but still alive, endless rows of prisoners looking like living dead, the prisoners sleeping on straw in cold barracks and corpses piled up beside each barrack because the ground was too frozen to dig graves.[144]

The sanitary inspector also mentioned Jewish graves "on the Žaliasis Kalnas", some of whose leachate ended up in a flow-pipe leading to a ditch on Radvilenų street (gatvė). "Žaliasis Kalnas" means "green mountain" and was one of the names by which the Kaunas neighborhood Žaliakalnis was known. In this neighborhood the former fortification known as Fort VII, mentioned as a killing site in the 2nd Jäger Report, was located. However, there is a Jewish cemetery closer than Fort VII to the Radvilėnų plentas, [145] so this is likelier to have been the problematic cemetery.

Also mentioned in the sanitary inspector’s letter is the transfer of an unspecified number of Jewish corpses from one or more graves that apparently did not comply with sanitary requirements, to a "safer" grave near the Vilijampolė bridge. Vilijampolė is the Kaunas eldership where the Kaunas ghetto (initially divided into a larger and a smaller ghetto) was located. [146]

The mass graves at the other killing sites in Kaunas, Fort IV and Fort IX, are not mentioned as a public health hazard in the City Sanitary Inspector's letter. The reason for this may have been that they were outside the CSI's area of competence. Fort IX is currently located in the Šilainiai eldership of Kaunas. The current Šilainiai, which took its name from the former Šilainiai village district, did not exist in the 1940s. It was developed in Soviet times, starting in the 1980s. [147]Šilainiai doesn’t appear on Kaunas maps from the 1930s and 1940s. [148] So it is possible that the area of Fort IX (like that of Forts IV and VI, which also don’t appear within the city limits on these maps) was at the time part of the GBK Kaunas and not of the Kaunas City Commissariat.

3. GBK Kaunas(Kauen)-Land

3.1 Alytus District

Document no.3: Letter dated 31 January 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Alytus District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 2-3).[149]

In the Alytus District of the GBK Kaunas Land the German and Lithuanian killers of the Rollkommando Hamann (RKH) and/or their local assistants[150] killed a total of 6,321 persons, all but one of whom were Jews, according to the 2nd Jäger Report.[151] When the District Medical Officer inspected the graves of "war victims" and "others" in the district, he found only two of the graves to be problematic under public heath aspects. The graves at Jieznai (144 Jews killed on 2.9.1941) were found to be too close to a local brook and lake. The Head of the Alytus District was notified and he instructed the Jieznas community provost to put a layer of stones, 20 cm high, on the graves, in order to reduce the danger of flooding in the spring. Inspection of the "Jewish graves" at Seirijai (953 Jews killed on 11.9.1941) revealed that too little soil had been laid in some places. Bearing in mind the natural subsidence of soil in the spring, it would be necessary to lay ½ m of soil on the graves of "the Jews and the war victims", and this layer should be put not only on the graves, but it also ½ m from the edges of the graves. It would also be attempted to get some lime and chloride of lime that should be poured together with soil on the graves.

3.2 Kaunas District

Document no. 4: Letter by the Head of Kaunas District to the Kaunas Chief of Police, 5 September 1941(LCVA R-1534-1-191-264).[152]

The contents and purpose of this document are mentioned as follows by Lithuanian historian Arūnas Bubnys: [153]
On the completion of the massacre, the issue of Jewish property was under further consideration. The German occupation government thought that the white-bands [= the Lithuanian "partisans", who wore white bands on their arms] , policemen and other persons, who participated in the massacre of the Jews, had taken too much of Jewish property. Thus, Commander of Kaunas district A. Lentzen [=Arnold Lentzen, the Gebietskommissar Kaunas –Land] ordered the governor of Kaunas County [= the Head of Kaunas District, GBK Kaunas-Land] to collect information on "how much treasure and money was taken by the officials of Kaunas County that were involved in the extermination of Jews". On 5 September 1941, the governor of Kaunas County [= the Head of Kaunas District, GBK Kaunas-Land] sent a letter to Chief of the Police of Kaunas Town and County [=the Kaunas City and District Commandant] Juozas Dženkaitis concerning Jewish property: "[…] If chiefs of police stations or yourself had any property or money of the said kind, information should also be provided and evidence submitted in relation to their use".

Remarks in square brackets are mine and mainly meant to adapt Bubnys’ terminology for the administrative entities to the terminology I use.

Document no. 5: Letter dated 2 October 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Kaunas District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 21). [154]

The District Medical Officer informed the Main Health Board that the Head of Kaunas District had collected information from all subordinated communities about the "graves from the war period" in their areas. According to this information there were 330 graves in the district, containing between 1 and 30,000 people (330 kapų, kuriuose palaidota nuo 1 ligi 30.000 asmenų). So every known grave from the "war period", from single graves to mass graves containing up to 30,000 corpses, had been counted.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the victims of hostilities on all Lithuanian territory during the German conquest must have numbered in the lower thousands at most, and the number of "war victims" proper in a single district must have been even lower. The DMO was obviously being discrete, counting as "war victims" also Soviet POWs in German camps (insofar as the local community provosts could obtain information about them) as well as the Jewish victims of pogroms and organized mass extermination in the DMO’s area of competence. As concerns the latter the number is far too high, at least if one considers only mass killings performed in areas outside the city of Kaunas and its immediate surroundings. The RKH and/or its local assistants accounted for 4,355 murder victims in these areas, thereof 4,298 Jews, according to the 2nd Jäger Report.[155]

The number becomes more realistic if one assumes that, as mentioned regarding Document no. 2, the area of Kaunas Fort IX, which was outside the Kaunas city limits, pertained to the Kaunas District and not to the Kaunas City administration, and that the Kaunas Head of District had also obtained information about this place and passed it on to the DMO. At Kaunas Fort IX, according to the 2nd Jäger Report, a total of 16,013 people (thereof 15,997 Jews) were shot until the end of November 1941. This is still little more than half the maximum mass grave occupancy mentioned in the DMO’s report to the Main Health Board, thus the number for that place reported to the Head of District would have been somewhat exaggerated. Anyway, it would show (if the above assumption regarding Fort IX holds true) that the community provost(s) in that area were aware of the magnitude of the killing.

Another possibility is that the largest reported grave or grave site was at a prison camp for Soviet PoWs, assuming that civilian authorities had access to or information about such area in the domain of the Wehrmacht. Estimates of the number of PoWs who perished at the Fort VI PoW camp (which was also outside the Kaunas city limits) go as high as 35,000. [156]

3.3 Kėdainiai District

Document no.6: Letter dated 21 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Kėdainiai District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 24). [157]

In the 2nd Jäger Report 6 mass killings in the Kėdainiai District are mentioned, in which a total of 4,308 people (4,267 Jews, 41 non-Jews) were killed.[158] The overwhelming majority of these deaths occurred at the cities of Kėdainiai (2,171 Jews, 30 non-Jews) and Krakės (1,125 Jews).

At Kėdainiai, according to the DMO’s letter, the corpses were buried 1.5 meters below the surface. This must have been the site of the large massacre on 28.8.1941 (2,076 Jews).[159] The victims of the earlier, smaller massacre recorded under 23.7.1941 (95 Jews, 30 non-Jews) were killed near the village Babėnai, which is about 3 km away from the center of Kėdainiai.[160] There the layer of soil above the corpses was only 90-100 cm, according to the DMO’s letter.

At Krakės, the place of the second largest mass killing in the Kėdainiai District (1,125 Jews),[161] the soil layer covering the bodies was 20-100 cm.

Not mentioned in the DMO’s letter are the grave or graves containing the Jews of Ariogala and Josvainiai (which at present are 26.6 to 36 km by car away from each other depending on the route). [162] These were killed on the same day, 1 September 1941, at one same place, on the bank of the Dubysa river, [163] which flows through Ariogala.

Why this site is not mentioned in the DMO’s letter dated 21 September 1942 is not known. It may have been mentioned in other correspondence that was not recovered. Or then the DMO overlooked this site. Yet another possibility is that the Ariogala killing site is included in the information for Krakės. The present distance by car between Krakės and Ariogala is 29.9 km by the shortest route.[164]

3.4 Lazdijai District

Document no. 7: Letter dated 14 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Lazdijai District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 31).[165]

The District Medical Officer mentioned two sites of mass graves in the Lazdijai District, one in in Lazdijai and the other in Leipalingis. Both sites are also mentioned in the 2nd Jäger Report:

- 11.09.1941, Leipalingis, 155 Jews killed.
- 3.11.1941, Lazdijai, 1,535 Jews killed.

3.5 Marijampolė District

- Document no. 8: Report by the Sanitation Department of the Wehrmacht Local Headquarters in Marijampolė dated 3.4.1942 (LCVA R-678-1-3-42).[166]
- Document no. 9: Letter dated 26 October 1942 from the Head of Marijampolė District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 35).[167]

In the first of these two documents, it was pointed out that the "Jew graves" by the "barracks area" on the banks of the Šešupę river posed a public health threat because rainwater and flooding from the river washed away the soil cover of these graves and laid bare the corpses contained therein. The second letter addressed the same problem, and how it had been solved: the mass graves, which were located at the bottom of a dried brook leading to the Šešupę river, had been moved to another place (that is, obviously, the corpses in these mass graves had been unearthed and transferred to one or more other graves where they would not be flooded by water from the river).

Both documents, which have already been addressed in an earlier article,[168] obviously referred to mass graves from the massacre mentioned under 1 September 1941 in the 2nd Jäger Report, in which a total of 5,090 people (1,763 Jews, 1,812 Jewesses, 1,404 Jewish children, 109 mentally ill, 1 female German national who was married to a Jew, 1 female Russian, in Jäger’s terminology) had been murdered.

Below are facsimiles of the documents mentioned in this article.

In the next article I will present similar documents regarding mass graves in districts of the GBK’s Panevėžys(Ponewesch), Šiauliai (Schaulen) and Vilnius(Wilna)-Land.

Documents

Document no. 1 (LCVA R-613-1-10-58)



Document no. 2 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 10-11)





Document no. 3 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 2-3)



Document no. 4 (LCVA R-1534-1-191-264)



Document no. 5 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 21)



Document no. 6 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 24)



Document no. 7 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 31)



Document no. 8 (LCVA LCVA R-678-1-3-42)



Document no. 9 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 35)



Notes

[131] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, pp. 268-270.
[132] Robert Kershaw, War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-42, Appendix 1 on p.613 (8,886 killed, 2,707 missing).
[133] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, pp. 299.
[134] About 200-300 non-Jewish civilians.
[135] About 400 prison inmates and 700 other civilians (Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, pp. 301-302). Regarding Soviet murders see also my article Mattogno’s Marijampolė Mass Graves Controversy.
[136] See note 41. According to Stahlecker, 3,800 Jews were killed in public pogroms. These and the subsequent executions in Fort VII are described in detail in Dieckmann, as above, pp. 313-331. Dieckmann considers Stahlecker’s figure for the public killings to be much too high. The subsequent executions in Fort VII claimed far more lives. According to a 1942 statistic of the Jewish council about 6,000 Jews fell victim to the first wave of murder in Kaunas. Assuming about 1,000 victims of public pogroms this would mean that 5,000 Jews were shot in Fort VII (p. 331). The number 6,000 is also mentioned in the letter dated 22.9.1941 by the Navy Liaison Officer at Army Group North.
[137] Dieckmann, as above, pp. 11-12.
[138] As above, pp. 1370-1371.
[139] The Svyriai, Ašmena districts and part of the Eišiškės district were made up of territory that had before April 1942 been part of the Generalbezirk Weißruthenien (see the page Generalbezirk Litauen).
[140]Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[141]Facsimile and partial translation.
[142] According to the page Gedenkorte Europas 1939-1945 – Kaunas VI. Fort, about 14,000 Soviet PoWs died in Fort VI between September 1941 and July 1942, and 35,000 died in all Kaunas camps between September 1941 and October 1943. The latter number is in line with Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, pp. 1347-48 and 1370-71. According to a Russian memorial set up at Fort VI, about 35,000 PoWs died in that camp alone (Kaunas VI. Fort). The Soviet Extraordinary Commission estimated that 45,000 Soviet POWs had perished in camps in the Kaunas area (Dieckmann).
[143] Dieckmann, as above, p. 1343.
[144] As above, p. 1347.
[145]Žydų kapinės, shown on Google Maps. In 2012, according to this article, an Israeli archaeologist found a mass grave in the area of the Žaliakalnis Jewish cemetery, which is presumed to be the place where the victims of the 1941 Lietūkis Garage Massacre were buried.
[146] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, pp. 930 ff.
[147] Mindaugas Balkus, Kauno istorija (30): Šilainių rajono raida sovietmečiu.
[148]Plan of city Kaunas 1932; Plan of city Kaunas, 1935; Plan of city Kaunas (Stadt und Verkehrsplan von Kowno), 1941, publisher Ab. Mil.- Geo; Plan of city Kaunas (Stadtplan von Kowno (Kaunas)), 1:15000, 1941, publisher Generalstab der Luftwaffe The maps also don’t show Fort IV and Fort VI within the city limits.
[149]Facsimile and partial translation.
[150] See Part 3 of this series.
[151] Alytus, 13.8.1941, 718 killed, thereof 717 Jews; Alytus and surroundings, 31.8.1941, 233 Jews; Jieznas, 2.9.41, 144 Jews; Alytus, 9.9.41, 1,279 Jews; Butrimonys, same day, 740 Jews; Merkinė, 10.9.1941, 854 Jews; Varėna, same day, 831 Jews; Leipalingis, 11.9.1941, 155 Jews; Seirijai, 11.9.41, 953 Jews; Simnas, 12.9.41, 414 Jews.
[152]Facsimile and translation.
[153] Province, p. 34.
[154]Facsimile and translation.
[155] Girkalinei (Girkalnis), 8.7.1941, 6 non-Jews; Wendziogala (Vandžiogala), 9.7.1941, 34 Jews and 4 non-Jews; Babtei (Babtai), 17.7.1941, 6 Jews and 2 non-Jews; Wendziogala (Vandžiogala), 31.7.1941, 13 Jews and 2 non-Jews; Jonava, 14.8.1941, 552 Jews; Wilkia (Vilkija), 28.8.1941, 402 Jews; Darsuniskis (Darsūniškis), 2.9.1941, 99 Jews; Carliava (Garliava), same day, 247 Jews; Jonava, same day, 1,556 Jews; Petrasiunai (Petrašiūnai), same day, 125 Jews; Babtei (Babtai), same day, 83 Jews; Wendziogala (Vandžiogala), same day, 252 Jews; Pravenischkis (Pravieniškės), 4.9.1941, 253 Jews; Cekiske (Čekiškė), same day, 146 Jews; Seredsius (Seredžius),same day, 193 Jews; Velinona (Veliuona), same day, 159 Jews; Zapiskis (Zapyškis), same day, 178 Jews; Uzusalis (Užusaliai), 12.9.1941, 43 non-Jews. The 784 Jews of Rumsiskis u. Ziezmariai (Rumšiškės and Žiežmariai) whose killing is recorded under 29.8.1941 are counted among the victims in the Trakai District of the GBK Wilna-Land, given that Žiežmariai was located in the district and Rumsiskis at the border between the two districts.
[156] See note 142.
[157]Facsimile and translation.
[158] Kedainiai (Kėdainiai), 23.7.1941, 95 Jews and 30 non-Jews killed; Ariogala, 30.7.1941, 27 Jews and 11 non-Jews; Kedainiai (Kėdainiai), 2,076 Jews; Ariogala (Ariogala), 2.9.1941, 662 Jews; Jasvainai (Josvainiai), same day, 282 Jews; Krakes (Krakės), same day, 1,125 Jews. Jäger’s numbers of Jews killed are very much in line with those established by Soviet investigation commission following the re-conquest of Lithuania: Kėdainiai city – 2,500; Krakės – 1,300; Ariogala – 700 ("Information on Executions of Soviet Citizens Committed by the German Fascist Aggressors in the Territory of the Kedainiai Uyezd, the Lithuanian SSR, for the Period of Temporary Occupation", about November 1944, in: The Tragedy of Lithuania: 1941−1944. New documents on crimes of Lithuanian collaborators during the Second World War / Трагедия Литвы: 1941−1944. Сборник архивных документов.− М: Алексей Яковлев, 2008. − 288 с. − Англ. ISBN 978-5903588-01-5, Document 103, p. 253).
[159] According to the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, first entry for Kėdainiai.
[160] According to the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, second entry for Kėdainiai.
[161] For a narrative of this massacre see the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, entry for Krakės.
[162] According to Google Maps.
[163] According to the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, entry for Ariogala or Josvainiai. While the 2nd Jäger Report mentions a total of 944 Jews killed from both places, most perpetrators and witnesses estimated about 700 victims.
[164] According to Google Maps.
[165]Fascimile and translation.
[166]Fascimile, transcription, translation.
[167]Fascimile and translation.
[168]Mattogno’s Marijampolė Mass Graves Controversy

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (2)

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

In this article I continue the presentation of administrative documents relating to mass graves from the extermination of the Jews in Lithuania in 1941, which like in the previous series will be contextualized with the 2nd Jäger Report and other evidence.

The documents presented hereafter are from districts of the GBK’s Panevėžys(Ponewesch), Šiauliai (Schaulen) and Vilnius(Wilna)-Land.



4. GBK Panevėžys(Ponewesch)

4.1 Panevėžys District

Document no.10: Letter dated 10 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Panevėžys District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 43)[169]

This is a quite detailed report, which mentions mass graves at the following places:
1. Kupiškis community, within the limits of the Jewish grave-yard.
2. Panevėžys community:
a) Kurganava wood, 150-200 meters away from the Kurganava primary school - three graves 25x50 m;
b) Staniūnai-Keizerlingas wood, 0.5 km away from Velžis road - one 2.5x20 m grave;
c) Žaliasis wood, 2 km away from the Marčiuškos village, 300 meters away from the road to Stumbriškis - one grave, 2.5x25 m.
3. Subačius community, the Ilčiūnai wood, 0.75 km away from the Ilčiūnai primary school, about 50 m away from the field road from Ilčiūnai to the Subačiaus station and borough on the public road – Two graves, 2.5x8 m.
4. Šeduva community – in the Liaudiškiai wood, 1.5-2 km away from the Liaudiškiai village, 250 m from the road to Liaudiškiai – Paberžėlia - two graves, 3x4 m in one place, and one grave, 3x4 m, in another place.

The Kupiškis killings were not the work of the Rollkommando Hamann RKH. None of Hamann’s shooters was involved, in fact no Germans at all. In the second half of 1941, a Kupiškis self-defense unit shot about 1,000 people, largely communists and Soviet activists, in the Kupiškis Free Thinkers cemetery. [170] Throughout July and September, 1941, about 1,500–2,000 Jews from Kupiškis, Šimonys, Subačius and Viešintai rural districts were murdered. The shootings were carried out by the Kupiškis self-defense unit.[171]

EK3 was also not to blame for the murder of the Jews from Subačius, which was entirely the work of local white arm-banders[172] (aka "partisans").

The massacre of the Jews of Velžis was carried out by white arm-banders and "German soldiers" on 21 July 1941. [173] The "soldiers" were RKH killers. The massacre of 70 Jews and 33 non-Jews on that day was recorded under "Panevezys" in the 2nd Jäger Report. If the DMO’s measurements for the grave in the Staniūnai_Keizerlingas wood (2.5 x 20 = 50 m²) are correct, the grave space would have been used very generously (2 corpses per m²).

The massacre of the Jews of Šeduva community on 25-26 August 1941, at two sites as suggested by the DMO’s report (in the Liaudiškiai wood, two graves à 3x4 meters, and by the Liaudiškiai village, one grave, 3x4 meters), [174] seems to have been one of those occasions on which local forces (Šeduva policemen and white arm-banders) did the killing and Jäger claimed the credit for it. He recorded the killing of 230 Jews, 275 Jewesses and 159 Jewish children, 664 people in total, on this occasion. If the DMO’s estimate of the three graves’ measurements (3 x 4 = 12 m² each, 36 m²) is correct, the graves would probably have been deeper and the corpses would have been packed more densely in these graves than elsewhere in this district. [175]

In the Žaliasis wood the available grave space was also used economically, but less so than in the Liaudiškiai graves made for the Šeduva Jews. Two massacres took place in the Žaliasis wood, one on 4 August and another on 11 August 1941. [176] With the indispensable assistance of the Panevėžys 10th Police Battalion (20 of whose members even did or took part in the shooting proper during the second massacre), Hamann’s killers, according to the 2nd Jäger Report, ended the lives of 422 people (362 Jewish men, 41 Jewish women, 5 Russian communists, 14 Lithuanian communists) on the first and exactly 500 people (450 Jewish men, 48 Jewish women, and 2 communists) on the second occasion. If the DMO reported correctly in his letter of 10.9.1942, all these 922 corpses were buried in a single grave with the measurements 2.5 x 25 m (62.5 m²), which would thus have been used twice.[177]

The largest mass graves mentioned in the DMO’s letter, 3 graves with the measurements 25 x 50 meters each (1,250 m² per grave, 3,750 m² in total) were from the largest massacre committed in the Panevėžys district, which was also the largest massacre in which the RKH was involved and the second largest massacre on EK3’s record. Again with the indispensable assistance of the Panevėžys 10th Police Battalion, which brought the victims to the killing site and 70 of whose members took part in the shooting proper after their nerves had been steeled with vodka, Hamann’s shooters murdered 7,523 Jews (1,312 men, 4,602 women and 1,609 children) in a massacre recorded by Jäger under 23.8.1941, which may have lasted up to three days (24 to 26 August according to some sources). [178] With just 2 corpses per square meter of grave area, grave space economy was not necessary; in fact much of the grave space probably remained empty like in the grave shown on the drawing below. [179]



The killing site is referred to in various sources as either the Pajuostė forest[180] or the Kurganava woods. [181] The latter name seems to be linked to the nearby Kurganava Primary School (Kurganavos Pradžios Moklyos), mentioned in the DMO’s letter. The Kurganava Primary School (Kurganavos Pagrindine Mokyla) still exists; it is near road 3006 leading from a place called Kaminžkis (apparently a small hamlet) to a village called Trakiškis. There are fields and a large wooden area nearby. This seems to be the wood known as the Pajuostė forest, which the DMO called the Kurganava woods. It is not far away from the Kurganava Primary School, as can be seen on the images below. [182] The distance between the school and the current memorial is more than the 150-200 meters mentioned in the DMO’s letter. But then, the memorial, as can be seen in the photo below[183] covers only a very small part of the killing site, and the forest area may have become smaller in the decades since the massacre.









So much for the Panevėžys District of the GBK Panevėžys.

4.2 Ukmergė District

Document no.11: Letter dated 14 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Ukmergė District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 64).[184]

In the Ukmergė District the RKH was involved in the killing of a total of 6,354 people, thereof 6,348 Jews, in four massacres recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report under the dates 1.8.1941 (296), 8.8.1941 (702), 19.8.1941 (641) and 5.9.1941 (4,709). The killing was done in the Pivonija forest[185], mentioned in the DMO’s letter. Like in other places assistance from local forces (especially that of white arm-banders from Žemaitkiemis, Vidiškiai and Kavarskas, led by K. Čiukšys) was essential. The Soviet Extraordinary Commission opened the mass graves in the Pivonija Forest at the end of August 1944. It estimated the number of victims at 12,000, which is too high.[186]

4.3 Utena District

Document no.12: Letter dated 15 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Utena District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 66).[187]

A total of 4,609 people, thereof 4,603 Jews, were killed by RKH members and their local assistants, in 3 massacres recorded in the Jäger Report under the dates 31.7.1941 (251), 7.8.1941 (571) and 29.8.1941 (3,782). The last massacre is mentioned under "Utena und Moletai" in the 2nd. Jäger Report. Mass graves in Utena community and the Molėtai community, which are quite close to each other,[188] are mentioned in the DMO’s letter. In 1944 the Soviet commission investigating Nazi crimes found three big trenches and a few smaller ones in the Rašė forest. The commission estimated that about 9,000 people had been killed there. [189]

The other mass grave site in the Utena District mentioned by the DMO is at the Anykščiai community. Here the killing, which is not mentioned in the Jäger Report, was done exclusively by Lithuanian white arm-banders. [190]

4.3 Zarasai District

Document no.13: Letter dated 14 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Zarasai District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 70).[191]

A single massacre in this district is mentioned in the Jäger Report, under the date 26.8.1941. A total of 2,567 Jewish men, women and children and two non-Jews were killed by members of the RKH and local white arm-banders. The place of the massacre mentioned in the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania is the Degučiai administrative district, Dusetos forestry district, Krakynė forest.[192] According to the DMO’s letter the mass graves in the district were located as follows:
1. in the field of the Vencavai estate, the Antalieptė community;
2. Sųgardai estate in the Salakas community;
3. Steponiškiai village in the Antalieptė community.

Krakynė (Zarasai) is a village 3 km from Vencavai, a village near the road Dusetos-Degučiai. It’s only history seems to be that of the massacre on 26 August 1941. Krakynė lies in an open area that seems to be part of the Krakynės Miškas, the Krakynė forest. Another village in or close to that forest is Steponiškiai. The screenshots below show the Krakynės Miškas and each of the villages Krakynė, Vencavai and Steponiškiai.







5. GBK Šiauliai (Schaulen)

Šiauliai District

Document no.14: Letter dated 18 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Šiauliai District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 51) [193]

The DMO’s letter mentions mass graves in the Normaičiai and Narutaičiai woods, as well as at Gruzdžiai and Žagarė. At the last of these towns 2,236 Jews (633 men, 1,107 women and 496 children) were killed on 2 October 1941 according to the 2nd Jäger Report. Žagarė merited a special mention because something extraordinary happened during this massacre: there was a revolt among the Jews being led to the killing site, whereupon 150 Jews were shot immediately, and 7 "partisans" were injured. The killing was commanded by three Germans, two lieutenants and one NCO, and the executors were the 14th Schutzmannschaft Battalion from Šiauliai, commanded by Lt. Kolokša, plus auxiliary police from Linkuva. [194] After the re-conquest of Lithuania, a Soviet commission examined the mass graves at Žagarė, opening three graves. From the first of these graves, shaped in the form of an "L", 80 meters long from north to west [south?], 42 meters from east to south [west?], 4 meters wide and 2 meters deep, 2,403 corpses were extracted, among them 530 men, 1,223 women and 625 children. [195]

6. GBK Vilnius (Wilna) Land

6.1 GBK Level

- Document no.15: Letter by the Regional Commissioner Wilna-Land to the Head Official of Nemenčinė dated 17.2.1942 (LCVA R-685-5-10-28). [196]
- Document no.16: Letter by the Regional Commissioner Wilna-Land, Horst Wulff, to the Heads of District, dated 25 April 1942 (LCVA R-685-5-10-41). [197]
- Document no.17: Letter by the Counselling Medical Officer of the Regional Commissariat Wilna-Land to the District Medical Officers, dated 16.06.1942 (LCVA R-613-1-10-71). [198]

In the first of these documents (no. 15) Regional Commissioner Horst Wulff reminded the Head Official (Amtsvorsteher) of Nemencing (Nemenčinė) that he should fence in the sites of Judenliquidationen, liquidations of Jews. Nemenčinė was one of EK3’s killing sites, where 403 Jews were killed by EK3’s Teilkommando in Wilna (TKW). The killing is recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report under 20.9.1941.

Nemenčinė was not Wulff’s only concern, as the second document (no. 16) shows. On 25 April 1942 he instructed the Švenčionys, Trakai, Vilna, Svyriai, Ašmena and Eišiškės distict heads to immediately pour chloride of lime in sufficient quantities on the sites of the liquidation of the Jews (Liquidierungsstätten der Juden) and fill up the sites with new soil. In four of these districts EK3 had conducted mass executions of Jews (Svyriai and Ašmena were only added to the Generalbezirk Litauen after EK3’s 1941 extermination campaign).

Public health concerns were also the reason behind the third document (no. 17). In this letter dated 16.6.1942 the Counselling Medical Officer of the Regional Commissariat Wilna-Land instructed the District Medical Officers of the GBK Wilna-Land to carry out an immediate control of all mass graves of Jews and prisoners of war in their respective districts as concerns their risk of epidemics, and to provide a precise description of the location of burial sites.

Three answers by District Medical Officers to this letter have been preserved and will be shown below.

6.2 Eišiškės District

Document no.18: Letter by the District Medical Officer of Eišiškės to the Regional Commissar’s Counselling Medical Officer, dated 08.08.1942 (LCVA R-613-1-10-64). [199]
Document no.19: Letter dated 10 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Eišiškės District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 73).[200]

The first of these letters, handwritten in German with some linguistic errors as one would expect from a Lithuanian not fluent in the German language, was addressed to the Counselling Medical Officer of the Regional Commissariat Wilna-Land and thus in all probability a reply to the latter’s letter dated 16.6.1942 (Document no. 17), even though the date of that letter was mistakenly stated to be 10.6.1942. The Counselling Medical Officer’s letter dated 20.7.1942, also mentioned in the DMO’s reply, was probably a reminder after no answer to the first letter had been provided. The DMO’s letter mentions mass graves of Jews at two places in the Eišiškės District: 700 meters to the southeast of Eišiškės (city) dwelling homes, and 500 meters away from dwelling homes of the village Jursdika. Mass graves in the same places are also mentioned in the second document (no. 19).[201]

The massacre of the Jews from Eišiškės and surrounding towns, whose end result (3,446 Jewish men, women and children killed) is recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report under 27.9.1941, seems to have been committed with local assistance by a Lithuanian militia (also) known as the Ypatingasis Būris.[202] The killing was done at two places; Germans were also present but it is not clear whether they also took part in the shooting. [203]

6.3 Švenčionys District

Document no.20: Letter dated 14 September 1942 from the District Medical Officer of the Švenčionys District to the Main Health Board (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 56). [204]

The letter mentions a mass graveyard at Švenčionėliai, the largest in the district, where about 5,000 people are buried. These people were Jews massacred on 7 and 8 October 1941 by a detachment of EK3, Ypatingasis Būris and about 120 local policemen and "partisans". The number of victims recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report under 9.10.1941 is 3,726. However, this number may be too low.[205]

The Švenčionys DMO’s letter is arguably the most significant document in the LCVA’s Main Health Board collection presented in this series, as it is the only one mentioning the number of people (about 5,000) who, according to its author’s estimate and/or information he had available, were buried at one of EK3’s killing sites. The number is in line with at least one other estimate and, if correct, would mean that Jäger undercounted the victims of this massacre and the DMO was better informed about the number killed than Jäger. The DMO’s letter doesn’t mention that the people buried in the mass graveyard at Švenčionėliai were Jews, but there’s no evidence to suggest any other possibility.

6.4 Trakai District

Document no.21: Letter dated 31 August 1941 by the Head of Trakai District to the Regional Commissioner Wilna-Land (LCVA R-500-1-4t.1-250). [206]
Document no.22: Letter by the Chief of Kaišiadorys Police Station to Trakai Head of District dated 1 September 1941 (LCVA R-500-1-4t.1-258).[207]
Document no.23: Letter by the Head of Trakai District, dated 8 November 1941, Trakai town mayor, Žiežmariai, Semeliškės and Eišiškės community provosts (LCVA R-500-1-4llt-794). [208]

Under the date 26.8.1941, the 2nd Jäger Report recorded the murder of the entire Jewish population of Kaišiadorys, 1,911 men, women and children. Either Jäger got the date wrong or the massacre lasted until 27 August, for the Kaišiadorys Precint Chief of the Trakai District Police, in a letter dated 1 September 1941, informed the Head of Trakai District that on 27 August all Jews of Kaišiadorys had been shot by "Kaunas Auxiliary Police" and "German soldiers" (Document no. 22). As usual, local forces took part in the killing – Kaišiadorys white arm-banders, police and local volunteers. According to the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, the massacre took place at several sites, one in the so-called Vasiliev ditch, and the other next to what is now the Vilnius–Kaunas highway. The victims also included Jews from the surroundings of Kaišiadorys, which had previously been brought to Kaišiadorys: 263 men and 85 women from Žasliai, 193 men and 85 women from Žiežmariai. [209]

A few days later it was the turn of the remaining Jews of Žasliai and Žiežmariai and those of Rumšiskės. The killing of 784 Jews (20 men, 567 women and 197 children) was recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report under the date 29.8.1941 and the place names Rumsiskis u. Ziezmariai (Rumšiškės and Žiežmariai).

In his aforementioned letter to the Head of Trakai District, the Kaišiadorys Precint Chief apparently was not breaking any news. On the date before that of the precint chief’s letter, 31 August 1941, the Head of District had already sent a letter to the Regional Commissioner in Vilnius, informing that in Kaišiadorys, Žasliai and Žiežmariai there was not a single Jew left and requesting instructions on how the mobile and immobile property of the murdered Jews was to be disposed of (Document no. 21).

The Head of Trakai District also produced the first surviving document that I know of suggesting public health concerns in connection with the mass graves of murdered Jews. In his letter dated 8.11.1941 (Document no. 23) he instructed the mayor of Trakai and the provosts of the Žiežmariai, Semeliškės and Eišiškės communities[210] to fence in the "Jewish graves" so that animals and people could not access them, and to pour chloride of lime on the graves on the 25th of each month if the ground was not frozen.

Document no.24 Letter dated 8 July 1942 by the District Medical Officer of Trakai District to the Regional Commissioner Wilna-Land (LCVA R 613/1/10 fl. 69+69a).[211]

Responding on 8.7.1942 to the letter sent on 16.6.1942 by the Counselling Medical Officer of the Regional Commissariat Wilna-Land (Document no. 17), the District Medical Officer of the Trakai District mentioned the following mass graves:
1. Community of Traken
In easterly direction 2 km from Traken, 1 km from the village of Wornicken, 1 km from the forest, 1 km from the lake, in a sandy depression, there is a Jewish mass grave 80 meters long, 4 meters wide and 4 meters deep.

2. Community of Semelischken
In northerly direction 1 km from Semelischken by the forest, 50 m from the road, 2 km from the river Strawa on a sandy height, there is a Jewish mass grave about 30 m long. Drainage in the direction of Semelischken.

3. Community of Zesmaren
1) In northerly direction 3 km from Zesmaren, on land belonging to the village Trilischken, 1 km from the road Zaslen-Zesmaren, on a sandy height there is a Jewish mass grave 33 meters long.
2) In northerly direction 5 km from Zesmaren, 2 km from the road Kaischedoren-Zesmaren, by the Bladukischker Forest there is a Jewish mass grave 30 meters long.

The first two mass graves can be clearly attributed to two massacres recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report: Trakai, 30.9.1941, (1,446 Jewish men, women and children) and Semiliski (Semeliškės), 6.10.1941 (962 Jewish men, women and children). These massacres were organized by EK3’s Teilkommando in Wilna (TKW), which started its killing activity on 12 August 1941 and until 17.9.1941 murdered Jews in the city of Vilnius only, before also visiting communities of the Vilnius and Trakai districts. The aforementioned earlier massacres (recorded under 26 and 29 August) in communities of the Trakai District close to the Kaunas District (Kaišiadorys, Rumšiškės and Žiežmariai) were the work of the RKH, operating from Kaunas city, and its local assistants. The territorial competences of these two sub-units of EK3 are probably the reason, or one of the reasons, why massacres at places that were relatively close together were carried out in different periods, some in late August and others in September/October 1941.

The mass grave at Trakai, according to the DMO’s letter, was 80 meters long, 4 meters wide and 4 meters deep, i.e. it had a volume of 1,280 m³. Even deducting 80x4x1.5 = 480 m³ for the soil cover, the mass grave would still be over-dimensioned for the corpses of "only" 1,446 people, especially as many of these were children. [212] This suggests that, if the DMO’s measurements were correct, the pit was originally meant for a number of victims significantly higher than those eventually buried there, and that the grave eventually remained empty in some parts like in the figure shown earlier in this article. As a grave with the measurements 30 x 4 x 4 meters would have been perfectly sufficient, [213] and as the length of the other graves in the area mentioned by the DMO is in that order, it is also possible that the "80" resulted from a typo and was meant to read "30". In the 30 meter long mass grave at Semeliškės, assuming that it had the same width and depth as the one at Trakai, use of available grave space would have been fairly economical, though with much room for improvement. [214]

As to the other to mass graves mentioned in the DMO’s report, the closest association is that of the killing of the Jews of Kaišiadorys, Rumšiškės and Žiežmariai, recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report under the dates 26 and 29 August 1941. Assuming a depth and width of respectively 4 meters for the graves mentioned under items 3, 1) and 3, 2) of the DMO’s report, the volume of these graves would be more than sufficient to take in the corpses of the 2,695 victims of these massacres, if all these victims had been buried there (see below).

The reference of the first grave site is 3 km north from Žiežmariai, 1 km from the road between Žiežmariai and Žasliai. The distance between these two locations by car is 16.4 km along the fastest route, via the Žaslių gatvė (road 1808), which runs west/northwest of the Strošiūnų kraštovaizdžio draustinis (Stošiūnai Landscape Reserve) and passes by Triliškės village. The location is shown on the screenshots below from the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania and from Google Maps.[215]The Triliškės village is 8.1 road kilometers by car away from Kaišiadorys by the shortest route. [216]The distance between Kaišiadorys and the killing site as the crow flies would be much shorter. So the site would be quite suitable for killing the Jews collected at Kaišiadorys and Žiežmariai.









The reference of the second grave site is 5 km from Zesmaren, 2 km from the road Kaischedoren-Zesmaren, by the Bladukischker Forest. Unlike the first site, this one is not shown in the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, which places the second killing site of Kaišiadorys and Žiežmariai Jews near a village called Strošiūnai next to what is now the Vilnius–Kaunas highway. [217] It seems that there is no forest currently called Bladukiškės miškas (Bladukishkes Forest); the closest match on the map[218] is a wooded area to the southwest of Vladikiškės, on the other side of the Kauno gatvė (road 142/1806). The wood may have been larger in 1941 than it is now. Vladikiškės is mentioned as one of the Kaišiadorys/Žiežmariai killing sites in other sources. [219] This would mean that a mass grave mentioned by the Trakai DMO didn’t enter the Lithuanian record of killing sites while on the other hand a killing site that has a Lithuanian Unique Object Code[220] was not mentioned by the Trakai DMO in 1942, for whatever reason.





Also not mentioned in the DMO’s letter is the shooting of the last 80 Jews of Rumšiškės on the outskirts of the Pieveliai village, which took place on the same date as the massacre of the remaining Jews of Žiežmariai and Žasliai, 29 August 1941. [221] However, this omission is easy to explain. Whereas Žiežmariai was located in the Trakai District of the GBK Wilna-Land, Rumšiškės was located in the Kaunas District of the GBK Kaunas-Land, thus outside the Trakai DMO’s area of competence.

6.5 Vilnius District

Besides the aforementioned correspondence from the Regional Comissioner of the GBK Wilna Land (documents nos. 15 and 16) and his Counselling Medical Officer (document no. 17), the surviving documentation includes another response to the Counselling Medical Officer’s letter dated 16.6.1942.

Document no.25: Letter sent by the District Medical Officer of Wilna(Vilnius) District to the Regional Commissioner of Wilna Land on 30.7.1942 (LCVA R613/1/10, fl. 70+70a). [222]The DMO mentioned the following mass grave sites:

1) In the community Nemenčinė, in the forest Vienuolynas, 3 km away from Nemenčinė;
2) In the community Mickūnai, in the small forest of the Viličionis estate;
3) In the community of Rieše, at the edge of the forest Naujaneriai;
4) In the community Jašiunai, in the small forest of the Jašiunai estate.
5) In the community Rudamina, in the small forest Paneriai (near the Paneriai railway station).

Mass grave site no. 5 is the Ponary/Paneriai killing site, the largest in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, where at the time of the DMO’s letter about 28,000 people, overwhelmingly Jews, had been buried.[223] The circular pits mentioned by the DMO are now part of the Paneriai memorial. They are of course covered up, except for the upper parts, which are sloped like the walls of a crater. During a brief tour of Paneriai last 14 August took the photos shown below.







Now to the other four mass grave sites mentioned by the Wilna District’s DMO.

According to the 2nd Jäger Report, 403 Jews were shot on 20.9.1941 at Nemenčinė, and 1,767 were shot at Rieše on 24.9.1941. Strangely the mass grave described by the DMO in the forest Vienuolynas, 3 km away from Nemenčinė (50 x 30 m large), would be grossly overdimensioned for only 403 corpses,[224] whereas the mass grave in the community of Rieše, at the edge of the forest Naujaneriai, measures only 25 x 4 m according to the DMO’s letter, [225] and would thus be much smaller not only than the one near Nemenčinė but also than the grave at Mickūnai (50 x 12 m) and the one at Jašiunai, in the small forest of the Jašiunai estate (30 x 10 m). This suggests that the "4" regarding the Rieše grave should read "40", bringing this grave more in line with the others, or that the DMO mixed up the Nemenčinė and Rieše areas in his letter as concerns the size of the mass graves. It is also possible, considering that Nemenčinė and Naujaneriai are just 13.9 car kilometers away from each other, [226] that a significant part of the Jews recorded by Jäger under Rieše are buried (or were originally meant to be buried) at a larger mass grave near Nemenčinė. The Jews of Nemenčinė were marched 3 kilometers into the forest in the direction of Vilnius, [227] whereas the Naujaneriai village, where the Jews of Rieše and other locations (Maišiagala, Paberžė, etc.) are thought to have been killed, is 7 km away from Rieše. [228] So the two killing sites must have been rather close together.

The mass grave at Mickūnai mentioned in the same letter probably corresponds to the massacre at Novo-Wilejka mentioned in the 2nd Jäger Report under 22.9.1941 (1,159 Jews, thereof 468 men, 495 women and 196 children). Mickūnai is just 7.5 km by car from Naujoji Vilnia (=Novo-Wilejka). [229] In fact, the site of the mass grave mentioned by the DMO (small forest of the Viličionis estate) coincides with the place where, according to other evidence, the Jews of Naujoji Vilnia were murdered. [230]

The mass grave at Jašiunai, in the small forest of the Jašiunai estate, clearly corresponds to the massacre of 575 Jews recorded under 25.9.1941 in the 2nd Jäger Report.[231] Again, the mass grave described by the DMO (30 x 10 meters = 300 m²) seems overdimensioned, though not as grossly as the one at Nemenčinė would be if it contained only 403 Jews.[232]

Besides the mass graves from the massacres of the Jewish population in the district for which he was responsible, the Vilnius DMO also mentioned mass graves at the "N. Wilna" (=Naujoji Vilnia) camp for Soviet PoWs, about which he had not been able to obtain information as the graves were wholly on territory controlled by the Wehrmacht. The Soviet Extraordinary Commission estimated that about 13,000 PoWs perished at this camp. [233] In another PoW camp in the Vilnius area, at Bezdonys, up to 25,000 PoWs died and were buried in 18 mass graves. [234] For some reason the Bezdonys camp isn’t mentioned in the DMO’s report. But like in other cases addressed in this article, the non-mention of a mass graves site in a report about sanitation matters does not mean that such site didn’t exist. The mention of such site, on the other hand, corroborates evidence which, like the 2nd Jäger Report, refers to mass killings in the corresponding location.

Facsimiles of the documents mentioned in this article are shown hereafter.

Following these documents is a color copy of the Jäger Report, reproduced with the kind permission of Gilles Karmasyn, who first published published this color copy on the PHDN site.

Document no. 10 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 43)



Document no. 11 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 64)



Document no. 12 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 66)



Document no. 13 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 70)



Document no. 14 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 51)



Document no. 15 (LCVA R-685-5-10-28).



Document no. 16 (LCVA R-685-5-10-41)



Document no. 17 (LCVA R-613-1-10-71)



Document no. 18 (LCVA R-613-1-10-64)



Document no. 19 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 73)



Document no. 20 (LCVA R627-1-150 fl. 56)



Document no.21 (LCVA R-500-1-4t.1-250)



Document no.22 (LCVA R-500-1-4t.1-258)



Document no.23 (LCVA R-500-1-4llt-794)



Document no.24 (LCVA R 613/1/10 fl. 69+69a)



Document no.25 (LCVA R613/1/10, fl. 70+70a)



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Below is the aforementioned color copy of the Jäger Report, as featured on this page. Source: Russian Military State Archives in Moscow (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Voennyi Arkhiv / Российский государственный военный архив) abbreviated RGVA, aka State Archives Moscow, file 500-1-25, fls. 110 to 118. The remark at the top of the page reads as follows:
PHDN présente ici, pour la première fois sur internet et la première fois tout court dans leur version couleur, les scans de l’original conservé dans les Archives d’État Militaires Russes, dans son état en ce début de XXIe siècle. On remarque, malgré la meilleure qualité des scans, une dégradation de l’état de certains feuillets par rapport à la version de 1963.
PHDN present here for the first time on the internet, and for the first time in their color version, the original scans preserved in the Russian State Military Archives, in their state at the beginning of the twenty-first century. We note that, despite the best quality scans there is a degradation of the state of some sheets in relation to the 1963 version.




Notes

[169]Fascimile and translation.
[170]Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, first entry for Kupiškis
[171] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, second entry for Kupiškis .
[172] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, third entry for Kupiškis. The entry mentions 80 victims, which considering the measurements of graves described by the DMO (2 graves à 2.5x8 = 20 m², 40 m² in total) means that either grave space was used very generously (2 corpses per square meter), or something bigger happened here (possibly some of the Jews from from Kupiškis, Šimonys, Subačius and Viešintai, mentioned in the second entry, were buried in these graves as well).
[173] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, fourth entry for Panevėžys.
[174] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, first and second entry for Šeduva.
[175] The burial density would have been about 6 per m³ if the graves were 3 meters deep, 9 per m³ if the depth was 2 meters. Regarding the burial density that can be achieved if there are many children among the corpses and grave space is used economically, see my article "Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 4, Section 1).
[176] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, second entry for Panevėžys. The Atlas mistakenly counts only the male Jews (362) of the first massacre recorded in the 2nd Jäger Report.
[177] Assuming a grave depth of 3 meters, the burial density would have been about 5 corpses per cubic meter.
[178] See notes 84 and 85.
[179] The drawing is from R. Wright, I. Hanson and J. Sterenberg, "The Archaeology of Mass Graves", in: John Hunter and Margaret Cox, Forensic Archaeology: Advances in Theory and Practice, 2005 Routledge, London and New York, pp. 137-158 (p. 148).
[180] E.g. the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, third entry for Panevėžys . Precise location: Panevėžys district, Miežiškiai administrative district, Biliūnai village, Pajuostė forest.
[181] E.g. "Lithuania's biggest cities to pay tribute to Holocaust victims", Delfi by The Lithuania Tribune, January 26, 2018; "Remembering the Holocaust in Panevėžys", The Jewish Community of Lithuania, 25.09.2016; Panevėžio krašto žydų istorija - Panevėžio miesto žydų bendruomenė (article on the website of the Panevėžys Jewish Community).
[182] The first two images are from Google Maps, here and here. The third image is based on the map of the Pajuostė forest killing site on the page Gedenkorte Europas 1939-1945 - Panevėžys Stadt.
[183] The photo is from the same page mentioned in the previous note.
[184]Facsimile and translation.
[185] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, fourth entry for Ukmergė.
[186] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, p. 368, citing Act of the Commission in GARF (Государственный архив Российской Федерации – ГАРФ, the State Archive of the Russian Federation), 7021-94-432, fl. 1f.
[187]Facsimile and translation.
[188] Shortest distance by car is 36.7 km according to Google Maps.
[189] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, second entry for Utena.
[190] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass Killing of the Jews of Anykščiai.
[191]Facsimile and translation.
[192] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass Killing of the Jews from the Zarasai Area.
[193] Facsimile and translation.
[194] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, pp. 843-847 (p. 846).
[195] Act on Crimes of Fascist Aggressors and their Accomplices in the Vicinity of the City of Žagarė, October 5, 1944, reproduced in Tragedy, Document 16, pp. 58-60. The geographic directions may be mixed up in the English translation.
[196]Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[197]Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[198]Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[199]Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[200]Facsimile and translation.
[201] The former letter, apparently signed by the same person as the latter, mentions a soil cover of 0.5-1m, whereas in the latter it is stated that in May of that year an additional soil layer of 1.5 meters had been put on the graves close to Eišiškės, that the graves close to the Jursdika village had been arranged so that the soil cover was no less than 1.5 meters deep, and that the graves had been fenced. It cannot be established why the DMO provided different information as concerns the (additional) soil layer to the Counselling Medical Officer on the one hand and the Main Health Board on the other, and why the fencing is mentioned in the latter but not in the former letter. It is possible that the soil covering to a depth of 1.5 meters and the fencing had been done following instructions received after the first letter and the DMO had an interest in claiming earlier accomplishment. Another possibility is that when writing the latter letter the DMO had more accurate information as concerns the measures taken than when writing the former. Anyway, the graves mentioned in one and the other letter are obviously the same.
[202] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik.The members of this unit were recruited in Vilnius by Martin Weiss from the Lietuvos Šaulių Sajunga organization, popularly known as Shaulists. The group was commanded by Juzoas Šidlauskas, and then Balys Norvaiš, both former officers of the Lithuanian army, subordinated to the Germans. The unit started out with 50 volunteers in July 1941 and soon grew to several hundred soldiers and officers. It almost entirely consisted of Lithuanian activists, although it also included three Poles and a few Russians. Commands were issued in Lithuanian, and the unit was called Ypatingasis Burys (full name Vokieciu Saugumo policijos ir SD ypatingasis burys– The Special Branch of the Security Police and SD). Among the Polish population of Vilnius they were usually known as the "Ponary riflemen". See Piotr Niwiński, Ponary. The Place of "Human Slaughter" (brochure in Polish, Lithuanian and English), p. 16.
[203] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass Murder of the Jews at Eišiškės; Mass Murder of the (Elderly) Jews of Eišiškės.
[204]Facsimile and translation.
[205] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, pp. 908-910. Dieckmann considers a number of victims in the order of 5,000 more probable.
[206]Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[207] Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[208] Facsimile, transcription and translation .
[209] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass Murder of the Jews of Kaišiadorys and Surrounding Areas; Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, p. 899.
[210] At the time when this letter was written, the Eišiškės community was part of the Trakai District of the GBK Wilna-Land. The Eišiškės District, comprising this area and areas that had been part of the Generalbezirk Weißruthenien, was formed as of 1.4.1942. See note 8.
[211]Facsimile, transcription and translation.
[212] The concentration would be just about 2 corpses per cubic meter, well below the concentration (at least about 11 corpses per cubic meter, see my article "Alleged" Mass Graves and other Mattogno Fantasies (Part 4, Section 1)) that would be feasible if the available space were used as sparingly as possible.
[213] The volume would 480 m³, 300 m³ after deducting the assumed soil cover (180 m³). 1,446 corpses in 300 m³ would be about 5 corpses per cubic meter.
[214] 962 corpses in 300 m³ = about 3 corpses per cubic meter.
[215]Žasliai to Žiežmariai.
[216]Kaišiadorys to Triliškės.
[217] See the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania pages Mass Murder of the Jews of Kaišiadorys and Surrounding Areas and Mass Murder of the Jews (Women, Children and Elderly) of Kaišiadorys and Surrounding Areas.
[218]Žiežmariai to Kaišiadorys
[219] Diekmann, Besatzungspolitik, p. 899; Bubnys, Province, p. 55. Bubnys cites the interrogation of one A. Dvilevičius of 30 October 1952.
[220] The Unique Object Code (Unikalus objekto koda) is 10891 - Žydų žudynių vieta ir kapas - Kaišiadorių rajono sav., Žiežmarių apylinkės sen., Bačkonių k., while that of the killing site near Triliškės is 10892 - Žydų žudynių vieta ir kapas - Kaišiadorių rajono sav., Žiežmarių apylinkės sen., Triliškių k.
[221] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass Murder of the Jews of Rumšiškės. Bubnys (Province, p. 57) considers the number 784, stated for Rumšiškės and Žiežmariai in the 2nd Jäger Report under 29 August 1941, to be too high if including only the remaining Jews from these two places. He assumes that the figure also includes Jews from other locations killed on the same day.
[222]Facsimile, transcription, translation.
[223] See my article How many people were killed at Ponary.
[224] The mass grave (50m x 30 m = 1,500 m²) would be generously dimensioned even for 1,767 corpses, and that even assuming a depth of only meter below a soil layer 2 meters thick. With only 403 corpses, the concentration would be one corpse per 3 or 4 cubic meters. Most of the grave would thus have remained empty.
[225] Assuming a depth of two meters below the soil layer, 25x4x2 = 200 m² would have been available for burying about 1,800 corpses – feasible, but unnecessary considering that larger graves could obviously be dug quite easily in soil of similar consistency at similar places.
[226] According to Google Maps, Nemenčinė to Naujaneriai.
[227] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass murder of the Jews from Nemenčinė .
[228] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass murder of the Jews at Naujaneriai .
[229] According to Google Maps.
[230] Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania, Mass murder of the Jews in Vėliučionys; Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, p. 895.
[231] The only mass killing of Jews in this area mentioned in the Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania is the Mass murder of the Jews of Jašiunai.
[232] The area of the grave was 30x10 = 300 m². Assuming a depth of 1 meter below the 2 meters of soil layer, the concentration would still be less than 2 corpses per cubic meter.
[233] Dieckmann, Besatzungspolitik, p. 1357.
[234]Gedenkorte Europas 1939-1945, Bezdonys; Dieckmann, as above.

Bila Tserkva, 'Gegenrasse' and the Ideological Roots of the Nazi Murder of Jewish Children

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In August 1941, 90 Jewish children in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, were shot by forces under the ultimate authority of General Field Marshall Walther von Reichenau. When Generalstabsoffizier Helmuth Groscurth attended a meeting to discuss the necessity of killing the children, the Field Commander, Reidl, gave him a justification based purely on ideological [weltanschauliche] grounds [facsimile here, translation here]. The subsequent shooting was described by August Haefner in testimony for the Callsen trial. Reichenau's reply to Groscurth confirmed his permission for these murders, whilst his order of a few weeks later echoed Reidl's emphasis on ideology by stating that"The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations." Reichenau thus reflected a worldview (Weltanschauung) that the "pitiless extermination of foreign treachery" via a "severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry" was necessary in order to "to liberate the German people once forever from the Asiatic-Jewish danger." An important task for historians is to address the roots of those beliefs and how they differed from the racism directed at most other Nazi victims of mass murder, such as Slavs.

In 1927, a Rosenberg disciple and future Ostministerium staff leader named Arno Schickedanz published Das Judentum, eine Gegenrasse, which developed the concept of "anti-race" that had been introduced by Rosenberg in 1920. Shickendanz's treatise was republished two years later as part of Das Lexikon der Judenfrage, and was especially notable for its section on Russia (pp.95-109) which, among other things, claimed that the Jews were were physically exterminating the upper and middle classes. Consequently, fourteen years before the Bila Tserkva massacre, Soviet Jews were already being depicted as a group that had posed a threat of physical extermination to Gentiles.

It was therefore always probable that when Hitler announced on March 30, 1941, that the war would be a "struggle for annihilation", this would be perceived by some leading figures as necessitating a physical extermination of Jews, especially when commanders such as Reichenau began to suffer military losses for which they believed that revenge via extermination was necessary. There is evidence that some commanders were already primed for such extermination before the invasion. For example, on May 2, Colonel General Hoepner conveyed much of the same meaning as Reichenau's later order when he wrote that "Both the planning and the execution of every battle must be dictated by an iron will to bring about a merciless, total annihilation of the enemy. Particularly no mercy should be shown toward the carriers of the present Russian-Bolshevik system" (quoted in Bartov, p.129).

Hitler made his thoughts on extermination explicit when he met Kvaternik on July 17, and told him that:
The Jews were the scourge of humanity, the Lithuanians as well as the Estonians are now taking bloody revenge on them...When even one state, for any reason whatsoever, tolerated one single Jewish family in its midst, this would constitute a source of bacilli touching off a new infection. Once there were no more Jews in Europe there would be nothing to interfere with the unification of the European nations. It makes no difference whether Jews are sent to Siberia or Madagascar. He would approach every state with this demand.
Although Hitler included Madagascar in his formulation, he had already decided that European Jews would be sent to Siberia to die out, while the Soviet Jews were to be shot on the spot (with perhaps a stay of execution if they were needed for labour). This is demonstrated by the fact that Himmler was, at that very moment, proceeding with a massive increase in killing manpower, and that reports such as Jaeger's show that women and children began to be systematically shot in the following four weeks, prompted in part by Himmler's visits to the regional HQ of the shooters. This needs to be borne in mind when reading claims by deniers, such as in Mattogno's forthcoming Einsatzgruppen 'handbook', that mass shootings were simply examples of the kind of atrocities that were committed by both sides in such a brutal war. Mattogno has never been able to explain away, for example, the fact that Himmler at Sonthofen in May 1944 stated that it had been necessary to exterminate Jewish children. He therefore chooses to ignore inconvenient passages from the Sonthofen speeches even when published by deniers, such as this extract from May 5, 1944, quoted by Staeglich back in 1979:
In my opinion, we, as Germans, do not have a right – whatever tender sentiments well up from the depths of our hearts – to allow hate-filled avengers to reach adulthood.

[translation by Thomas Francis in Staeglich's 'The Auschwitz Myth', reissued by Mattogno's own English-language publisher in 2015, p.121, and also posted to this CODOH thread. Himmler repeated the same thought on May 24, 1944, translated in Staeglich, p.122].
This type of killing therefore had a different aim than other wartime atrocities, except the total Nazi genocide of the gypsies (who were similarly defined as "asocials"). This was made clear by Thierack, as shown here, when he made a clear ranking of which groups had to be worked to death: "Jews and gypsies unconditionally, Poles who have to serve 3-4 years of penal servitude, and Czechs and Germans who are sentenced to death or penal servitude for life or to security custody [Sicherungsverwahrung] for life." The killings carried out by the Germans against Slavs, or by the Soviets against internal class "enemies", did not result from a belief that the executions were necessary in order to physically exterminate a "parasite" or "anti-race [Gegenrasse]." Whereas Mattogno and other Nazi apologists wish to argue that Jews were only shot because they were aiding the Bolshevists or concentrated in partisan areas, Hitler himself told the troops on October 2 that Bolshevism and plutocracy were caused by "Jews and Jews alone." The enemy was racial, not merely political or military, and the solution, in the heat of a war of annihilation, was rapidly radicalized to one of physical extermination.

Prussian blue penetration depth.

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Many years ago a few article drafts appeared on the late Harry Mazal's website mazal.org. One of them was entitled "Techincal requirements for a gas chamber and some observations on Prussian blue".

It turned out to be a draft of the article quoted by Dr. Richard Green in his devastating rebuttal of the fraudulent Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf. Apparently it was initially to be a part of the collective report responding to Rudolf, though later it was decided that only Dr. Green and Prof. Jan van Pelt would officially respond.

The drafts disappeared from the site some time later, and Mr. Mazal died in 2011. The paper was left unpublished, and it is highly unlikely that it will ever be published. Therefore I decided to post an excerpt from this article that concerns one point about the formation of Prussian blue with several valuable photos.

The excerpt follows. There has been some minimal editing of the references (like picture numbers).


What can be proven, to the embarrassment of deniers and pseudo-scientists is that Prussian Blue only stains the surface of mortar, plaster and brickwork. With the permission of the authorities of the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum, and under the watchful eye of one of its official guides, a number of very small samples of brickwork, mortar and plaster were carefully removed for further analysis. Viewed under a simple loupe, it could be seen that Prussian Blue hardly penetrated the surface of these samples.

The following samples were viewed using a simple Intel Model QX3 Computer Microscope. The images were exported into Photoshop 6.0, labeled, sized, and converted to HTML without further modification.
Illus.1: Fragment of wall "e" in BIa bath and delousing building with strong Prussian Blue staining (x10).
Illus. 2: Cross-section of sample shown in Illus. 1 showing minimal penetration of Prussian Blue into the body (x10).
Illus. 3: Cross-section of sample shown in Illus. 1 showing minimal penetration of Prussian Blue into the body (x60).
Illus. 4: Cross-section of sample shown in Illus. 1, tilted to show Prussian Blue stain on surface.
Illus. 5: Brick sample from exterior wall "E" of bath and delousing building in BIa showing heavy Prussian Blue staining (x10).
Illus. 6: Cross-section of brick sample shown in Illus. 17 showing minimal penetration of Prussian Blue stain (x10).
Illus. 7: Brick sample from exterior wall "E" of bath and delousing building in BIa showing heavy Prussian Blue staining (x10).
Illus. 8 Cross-section of brick sample shown in Illus. 7 showing minimal penetration of Prussian Blue stain (x10).
As may be observed in the eight photographs above, penetration of Prussian Blue into either the wall material inside of the building, or the bricks on the exterior, is minimal, corroborating previous reports. It is possible that very porous materials such as plaster might permit a slightly greater penetration of the stain, but not to the degree claimed, without proof, by Holocaust deniers.

There is an as-yet unsolved mystery of how Prussian Blue made its way through apparently solid brick walls leaving its tell-tale blue stains on the exterior of both bath and delousing chambers in BIa and BIb in Birkenau. An answer might be found by looking carefully at Illus. 9.

Illus. 9: Brickwork and Mortar on Exterior wall "E" of the bath and delousing building in BIb.
This close-up picture shows strong Prussian Blue staining on both mortar and brickwork. Two other facts are revealed: (1) The stain scarcely penetrates the mortar. The broken section reveals pristine, unstained material proving that Prussian Blue does not penetrate solids to any great degree; and (2) the stains on the bricks appear like a semi-transparent wash, suggesting that the bricks are not subject (as was shown in the illustrations above) to any great penetration by the pigment.

A third, much more subjective, observation regards the patterns that the stain has left on the brickwork and mortar. The stain gives the appearance of having come through cracks in the mortar as a liquid and flowed down the surface of some bricks and part of the mortar. The stain is indeed stronger at the points where the mortar meets the bricks. If Prussian Blue is insoluble and practically inmiscible in water, whatever came through those walls must have had cyanide in some soluble form together with iron salts sufficient to react in order to form Prussian Blue. Furthermore, it could not be hydrogen cyanide in gaseous form as this would have dissipated immediately upon being released to the atmosphere.

The Gardens at the Crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau

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In his contemporary manuscript, Marcel Nadjari, a prisoner of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau, provided the following description of crematorium 2/3 (he was usually employed at the latter):

"It is a big building with a wide chimney and 15 ovens. Below a garden there are two big endless rooms in the basement. The one serves for undressing and the other is the death chamber, where the people enter naked and after filled with about 3000 people, it is closed and they gas them, where they gave up the ghost after 6 to 7 minutes of martyrdom."


Taking the statement literally, vegetation and flowers should have been planted on the roofs of the undressing and gassing cellar. Since these semi-basements were supposed to be earth-banked and covered with earth, this seems in principle conceivable, although it is not supported by other testimonial evidence as far as I know.

Nadjari might have also had in mind the vegetation in the North-West corner of crematorium 3, which is flanked by the undressing and the gassing cellar.

Last but not least, the description could be a reference to an ornamental garden in the front yard of the crematorium; in this case the idea that "below a garden there are two big endless rooms" is meant in a figurative sense simplifying the situation, as the garden was only passed by the victims before they were going down the basement (this issue came up in an exchange with a Greek denier).

At crematorium 2, there was an ornamental garden measuring about 20 x 30 m and what seems like a smaller circle shaped garden at crematorium 3. Another structure resembling a garden can be found in the front yard of crematorium 5. They are readily visible on aerial photographs of the Birkenau complex in the year of 1944 (see Figure 1 and 2). From the ground, the ornamental garden of crematorium 2 looked like those in the camp section B II (see Figure 3), except that it was about half their size.

(the Holocaust denier John Ball has previously pointed out the garden at crematorium 2; his remark that it is a "healthy garden that was not walked on and crushed" [Ball, Air Photo Evidence, 2015, p. 58] seems to insinuate that many thousands of people did not walk past the garden, as if the intimidated and disciplined victims sent into the gas chambers would have dared to trample on an ornamental garden in the presence of foreign, armed and not so pleasant military)

Figure 1: Crematorium 2 (bottom) and 3 (top) with gardens and path of the victims marked on 23 August 1944 aerial photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau.


Figure 2: Possible garden marked at crematorium 5 on 23 August 1944 aerial photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau.


Figure 3: Ornamental garden in Auschwitz-Birkenau section BIIa (Zentralbauleitung Album).

The gardens were located next to the entrance of the crematoria and can be considered to have exerted a calming effect on the victims, who had to pass by it on their way to the undressing basement (yellow marking in Figure 1).

Furthermore, the gardening in the crematoria yards was a leisure activitiy to the prisoners of the Jewish Sonderkommando to fill the time and distract from the gruesome work in the crematoria. Jaacov Gabai stated that "there was a well-cared lawn. Sometimes, if there was nothing to do, we weeded or cleaned outside" (Greif, Wie weinten tränenlos, p. 213). Eliezer Eisenschmidt, who had "to cut the lawn in the yard", explained that also those "who were [else] occupied with gardening work" had to drag the corpses from the gas chamber (Greif, Wir weinten tränenlos, p. 253, 266).

Germar Rudolf doubles down on John Ball's Babiy Yar lie.

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John Ball's blatant lie about Babiy Yar was exposed by me here back in 2006.

Long story short, Ball lied about the place where the shootings took place in the ravine and "analyzed" the wrong area of the aerial photo. Here, once again, is the photo with Ball's picture overlaid. No witness has claimed shootings took place there. Ball deceptively omitted most of the ravine, including the places where the shootings did take place.

Ball's lie was republished under Germar Rudolf's editorship numerous times.

Ball's book is the volume 27 of the "Holocaust Handbooks" series and is already in its 5th "corrected and updated edition".

There's a note:
The first three editions of this book bore John C. Ball as the author of this work. On Jan. 29, 2015, John requested not to use his name for new editions, but allowed us the use all of the photographic and texual material as we see fit.
The first edition appeared in 1992 under the title Air Photo Evidence: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, Belzec, Babi Yar, Katyn Forest— World War II photos of alleged mass murder camps! Does evidence confirm or dismiss eye witness stories? Were gas chamber marks put on by CIA workers?, self-published by the author, Ball Resource Services Ltd., Delta, BC, Canada. The second edition of January 2015 has the same title as the current one and is a marginally corrected reprint of the first edition with a preface similar to the present one plus a number of footnotes added. The third and fourth editions (January 2015, March 2017) resembled the current one closely, except for some updates, corrections and material added.
Naturally, the lie is still in the book:


Wrong! This location is not alleged to have been used for shootings or cremations.

Fake news! Entirely wrong location.

A blatant lie! "8" is not the location "where between 33,771 and 100,000 bodies were said to have been exhumed and cremated".

Rudolf is well aware of our blog, so he has no excuse whatsoever.


Needless to say, this lie fully discredits not only the hoaxer John Ball (about whose other exploits you can read here, here and here) but also the fraud Germar Rudolf, known for his use of numerous fake PhDs in absence of a real one.

Agreements Made Before Operation Barbarossa to Target "Communists and Jews" in the Balkans and Occupied Eastern Poland

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A key argument of deniers, such as by Mattogno and Graf here, is that the Germans followed a policy in occupied eastern Poland that only pro-Communist "Soviet Jews were shot" systematically, while many other eastern Jews were killed only "on account of sabotage, anti-German activities, as carriers of diseases, and above all as retaliatory measures for partisan attacks." However, such deniers ignore the fact that agreements secured and transmitted by Heydrich before June 22, 1941 had paved the way for the Wehrmacht to give his forces the freedom to target "Communists and Jews" in the Balkan region and the areas of eastern Poland that the Germans would occupy before reaching the pre-1939 borders of the USSR. The evidence below therefore refutes Mattogno and Graf by showing that the Balkans and occupied eastern Poland, as well as the occupied pre-1939 USSR, were designated as grounds for "racial war" against an "anti-race", not just military or political war.

Heydrich was content for Jews to be targeted "as Jews", and this filtered down into instructions such as the fact that, as noted in EM 10, pogroms were to be co-ordinated with "anti-Communist" and "anti-Jewish" groups. The separation of "Communists and Jews" into two categories would appear in numerous killing reports, with Jews gradually constituting by far the largest number of people who were shot. Heydrich had notified the four Einsatzgruppen leaders verbally on June 17 (confirmed in writing on June 29) that pogroms were not to be hindered when instigated by "anti-Communist or anti-Jewish circles" and that such pogroms should be "implemented", "intensified when necessary" and "directed onto the right path" (translation by William Templer). Two days later, Heydrich's Einsatzbefehl Nr. 2 made it clear he was referring here to pogroms carried out by ethnic Poles. His order was also enclosed in EM 10, shown here, preceded by the line cited above which included the revelation that this targeting had been suggested by the "17th Army Command" (presumably Stülpnagel), thereby demonstrating the extent of Wehrmacht collusion. EM 10 also included a note from Einsatzgruppe C in Vilnius that EK 7a had initiated action against "Communists and Jews." This action was subsequently handed over to EK 9, which was led by Filbert, a man fiercely devoted to Heydrich's worldview and mission.

For the Balkans, Heydrich had reached an agreement with quartermaster-general Wagner, put in writing on April 2, 1941, stating that measures against "Communists and Jews" were to be within the remit of the Security Police (OKH/Gen.st.d.H./Gen.Qu. Abt. Kriegsverwaltung, Nr.II/0308/41, cited in Heer, p.75). The Wehrmacht then fully collaborated in the shooting of Jewish hostages in reprisal measures in Serbia in the summer and autumn of 1941, leading eventually to the genocide of the male Jews, as recorded in Eichmann trial documents T/867 to T/875 and as summarized by Browning online here and by Stephen Vargas online here. This was then followed in the first half of 1942 by the murder of Jewish women and children in gas vans, as Hans shows here in his refutation of Alvarez and Mattogno.

Whereas Mattogno and Graf claim that a policy of "emigration" was still being pursued by the Germans in the autumn of 1941, the research of Anderl and Manoschek has shown that the shootings of men and gassings of women included Jews who had tried to reach Palestine in late 1939 but become stranded in Kladovo, Serbia. Those Jews were buried in a site in Jajinci, which was exhumed and investigated by the Yugoslavs in documents available here, corroborated by testimonies such as that of  a Yugoslav who had been forced to dig up and burn bodies (translated into English here). At the very least, this shows that, as of October 1941, the Germans were not pursuing Jewish emigration but were rather placing non-Soviet Jews in positions where they could be used as hostages for reprisal measures and also "parked" in places such as Lodz, decimating them through overcrowding and labour while awaiting the opportunity to kill them farther east in the wake of the Jews who were already being exterminated there. Meanwhile, extermination by shooting was taking place in eastern Galicia, most notably Bloody Sunday, as described by Pohl here. As Nick Terry notes here, Einsatzgruppe z.b.V. had already executed at least 19,338 people by September 9, 1941.

The Wehrmacht's approval for such measures can be gleaned from the statements of its own commanders, collated and analyzed here and here and here and here and here. Mattogno and Graf's claim that many other eastern Jews were killed only "on account of sabotage, anti-German activities, as carriers of diseases, and above all as retaliatory measures for partisan attacks" is also refuted in those links, which also provide sufficient material to forewarn any unwitting reader that Mattogno's forthcoming Einsatzgruppen study will not take denial any further forward as a plausible contribution to scholarly understanding of these issues.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Aerial Photographs

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The following is a compilation of published aerial photographs (with close-ups) of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. I have also listed visible features relevant to mass extermination and figures on Jewish mass transports (derived from the so called Glaser list) to those days with aerial photographs of sufficient quality and before the halt of the extermination in October 1944.

In the context of Holocaust denial, it is noteworthy that the known aerial photographs show only few seconds of Birkenau from high altitude on few days in 1944, thereof only two days with excessive mass killings taken place (31 May and 8 July 1944 - as opposed to four other days in June and August with "mild" activity and "only" one or two Jewish transports arriving). At such frequency, the photographs cannot depict the actual magnitude of mass killing on a day and over a period. And yet, more or less static features such as open air incineration area, thick security and camouflage screens and discolouration at the gas introduction openings on the gas chambers' roof, as well as repeated heavy smoke from an incineration trench located close to the crematorium 5 gas chambers (also belching smoke on Sonderkommando ground photos) provide more than just a glimpse on the extermination machinery.

A useful resource for information on the various photos compiled by the late Harry Mazal can be found here (just some of scale figures need to be corrected).

Other blog postings related to the Auschwitz-Birkenau air-photos:

The Auschwitz Open Air Incineration Photographs as Evidence for Mass Extermination

31 May 1944

Unit: South African Air Force 60 Squadron
Air plane: Mosquito
Mission: 60PRS/462 60 SQ

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1508
exposures 3055-3057
Focal length: 20 inches
Flight altitude: 26,000 feet
Scale: 1:15,569

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1510
exposures 5018-5019
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: 27,000 feet
Scale: 1:54,000


Aerial Photographs

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 04144

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 04005

Close-up of Auschwitz-Birkenau Compound:

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 03977

Close-up of Crematoria 4 and 5:

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 03998
Close-up of Crematorium 2 (exposure 3056):

Source: Daniel Keren Jamie McCarthy Harry W. Mazal, The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau, Figure 26 in online version; note that what is marked in the photograph as earth bank seems like a camaflouge fence while what is marked as gas chamber is an earth bank.

Close-up of Bunker 2 (exposure 3056):

Source: Mattogno, Auschwitz Open Air Incinerations, Document 20

Visible Activity/Features Related to Mass Extermination
  • About 300 m² of incineration area in four trenches behind crematorium 5 
  • Smoke from one of the trenches behind crematorium 5
  • Ground-levelled for three barracks at Bunker 2 
  • About 200 m² of possible incineration area on three sites in the pentagon-shaped area behind Bunker 2, possibly another (fresh?) one close to the house.
  • Thick security screen erected between barracks and the pentagon-shaped area behind Bunker 2.
  • Discolouration around the four gas introduction openings on the roofs of the gas chambers of crematoria 2 and 3 
  • Thick security screen erected around crematorium 2 (apart from the South-East part of the site)
  • Bright spot at the chimney of crematorium 2 possibly indicating activity


Jewish Arrivals on this Day:
  • 10,022 Hungarian Jews in three transports, thereof about 6600 selected as unfit for work


26 June 1944

Unit: South African Air Force 60 Squadron
Air plane: Mosquito

Mission: 60/PR522 60 SQ

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can C1172
exposure 5022
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: 30,000 feet
Scale: 1:60,000

Aerial Photograph

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 04138

Auschwitz-Birkenau Area:

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 91530



Visible Activity/Features Related to Mass Extermination

(poor quality of photograph)

Jewish Arrivals on this Day:
  • 3,006 Hungarian Jews in one transport, thereof about 2,400 selected as unfit for work.


8 July 1944 

Unit: German Luftwaffe

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Auschwitz Box, envelope 17, security set GX DT/TM-3/Germany-East Auschwitz/neg. no. 38 N50 K19 [Film: 14/44 /LGK VIII) B. Nr. 123]

Aerial Photograph

Source: Mattogno, Auschwitz Open Air Incinerations, Document 32


Close-up of Crematorium 2:

Source: Source: Daniel Keren Jamie McCarthy Harry W. Mazal, The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau, Figure 25 in online version


Visible Activity/Features Related to Mass Extermination
  • Smoke behind crematorium 5
  • Discolouration around the four gas introduction openings on the roofs of the gas chambers of crematoria 2 and 3

Jewish Arrivals on this Day:

12,108 Hungarian Jews in five transports, thereof about 8,800 selected as unfit for work.


9 August 1944

Mission: USEC R-79

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can B6912
Exposures 1018-1025
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: -
Scale: -

(no image available)


20 August 1944

Mission:  USEC R86

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can B10658
Exposures 5018-5020
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: 26,000 feet
Scale:1:52,000

Aerial Photograph

Exposure 5018:

Source: Mattogno, Auschwitz Open Air Incinerations, Document 34

Visible Activity/Features Related to Mass Extermination

  • Smoke behind crematorium 5.
(poor quality of photograph)

Jewish Arrivals on this Day:
  • About 2,000 Jews from Lodz with one transport, thereof 522 men and an unknown number of women selected as fit for work


23 August 1944

Unit: South African Air Force 60 Squadron
Air plane: Mosquito

Mission: 60PR/686 60 SQ

National Collection of Aerial Photographs
Can ?
Exposures 3083 - 3086
Focal length: 36 inches
Flight altitude: 29,000 feet
Scale: ~ 1:9000

Aerial photograph

Source: National Collection of Aerial Photographs, 029-091 [exposure 3084]

Visible Activity/Features Related to Mass Extermination

  • About 300 m² of incineration area in four trenches behind crematorium 5 
  • Smoke from one of the trenches behind crematorium 5
  • Two horse-stable barracks at Bunker 2 
  • About 200 m² of possible incineration area on three sites in the pentagon-shaped area behind Bunker 2, another possible incineration site near to the house, which expanded compared to 31 May 44 indicating heavy activity.  
  • Thick security screen around the pentagon-shaped area behind Bunker 2.
  • Discolouration around the four gas introduction openings on the roofs of the gas chambers of crematorium 2 and 3 
  • Thick security screens erected around crematoria 2, 3, 4 and 5.
  • note that the queue of people visible between crematoria 4 and 5 seems to walk away from the extermination sites and thus correspond likely to people selected as fit for work returning from the Zentralsauna bathing facility.

Jewish Arrivals on this Day:
  • About 2,000 Jews from Lodz with one transport, thereof 557 men and an unknown number of women selected as fit for work


25 August 1944

Unit: South African Air Force 60 Squadron
Air plane: Mosquito

Mission: 60PR/694 60 SQ

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can F5366
Exposures 5016-5018, 5025-5027
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: 30,000 feet
Scale:1:60,000

National Collection of Aerial Photographs
Can ?
Exposures 4185 - 4188
Focal length: 36 inches (?)
Flight altitude: 30,000 feet (?) Scale: ~ 1:10,000

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency (also National Collection of Aerial Photographs)
Can F5367
Exposures 3184-3187
Focal length: 36 inches
Flight altitude: 30,000 feet
Scale:1:10,000

(exposures 3184-3187 and 4185 - 4188 were taken by two different cameras of the same aircraft, see here)

Aerial Photographs



Exposure 5017:
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 04007
Exposure 5018:
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 04006

Exposure 4186:
Source: National Collection of Aerial Photographs, 070-698

Close-up of Crematoria 2 and 3 site:

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 0393


Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 04300

Close-up of Crematoria 4 and 5 (exposure 4188):



Close-up of Bunker 2 site (exposure 4188):



Visible Activity/Features Related to Mass Extermination
  • About 300 m² of incineration area in four trenches behind crematorium 5, possibly a fifth incineration site in the North-Western corner of the crematorium 5 backyard.
  • Two horse-stable barracks at Bunker 2 
  • About 200 m² of possible incineration area on three sites in the pentagon-shaped area behind Bunker 2, another possible incineration site near to the house, which expanded compared to 31 May 44 indicating heavy activity. 
  • Thick security screen around the pentagon-shaped area behind Bunker 2.
  • Discolouration around the four gas introduction openings on the roofs of the gas chambers of crematorium 2 and 3 
  • Thick security screens erected around crematoria 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Jewish Arrivals on this Day:
  • About 4,000 Jews from Lodz with two transports, thereof 1,144 men and an unknown number of women selected as fit for work


13 September 1944

Unit: United States Airforce 464th Bombardment Group

Mission: 464 BG:4M97

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can B8413
Exposure 3V1
Focal length: 12 inches
Flight altitude: 23,000 feet
Scale:1:23,000

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can B8413
Exposure 6V2
Focal length: 24 inches
Flight altitude: 23,500 feet
Scale: 1:11,750

Aerial photographs

Exposure 3V1:
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 03198

Exposure 6V2:
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 91527

Visible Activity/Features Related to Mass Extermination
  • Two horse-stable barracks at Bunker 2 
  • Thick security screen around the pentagon-shaped area behind Bunker 2.
  • Discolouration around the four gas introduction openings on the roofs of the gas chambers of crematoria 2 and 3 (partly masked by smoke at crematorium 2)
  • Thick security screens erected around crematoria 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Jewish Arrivals on this Day:
  • No mass transport of Jews (about 1800 Poles from Warsaw).


29 November 1944

Unit: United States Airforce, 5th Photographic Reconnaissance Group
Air plane: P-38 Lightning

Mission: 15SG/887 5PG

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1616
Exposures 3070, 4058-4059
Focal length: 24 inches
Flight altitude: 26,000 feet
Scale:1:13,000

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1616
Exposures 5017-5018
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: 26,000 feet
Scale:1:52,000

Aerial photograph

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 03987



21 December 1944

Unit: United States Airforce, 5th Photographic Reconnaissance Group
Air plane: P-38 Lightning

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Mission: 15SG/994 15PG
Can D1533
Exposures 3019 - 3022
Focal length: 24 inches
Flight altitude: 25,000 feet
Scale:1:12,500

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Mission: 15SG/994 5PG
Can D1534
Exposures 4020, 4022-4023 
Focal length: 24 inches
Flight altitude: 25,000 feet
Scale:1:12,500

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1534
Exposures 5005 - 5008 
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: 25,000 feet
Scale:1:50,000


Mission: 15SG/997 5PG

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1535
Exposures 3012-3013
Focal length: 24 inches
Flight altitude: 25,000 feet
Scale:1:12,500

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1535
Exposures 5002-5003
Focal length: 24 inches
Flight altitude: 24,500 feet
Scale:1:50,000


Mission: 15SG/995 5PG

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1535
Exposures 4017 - 4018
Focal length: 24 inches
Flight altitude: 25,000 feet
Scale:1:12,500

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D1535
Exposure 5004 - 5005
Focal length: 6 inches
Flight altitude: 24,500 feet
Scale:1:49,000

Aerial photograph

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 03988

14 January 1945

Unit: United States Airforce 5th Photographic Reconnaissance Group
Air plane: P-38 Lightning

Mission: 15SG/1085 5PG

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency
Can D3777
Exposure 5004
Focal length: 6inches
Flight altitude: 21,000 feet
Scale:1:42,000

Aerial photograph



19 February 1945

Unit: German Luftwaffe

National Archives and Records Administration, RG-373, GX 12337/145


Aerial photograph
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photograph no. 04409

__________________________________________
Changed on 25/10/2018: implemented some comments of reader r thomas, see comments section.

SK Lange and Mattogno's Italian Book on the Einsatzgruppen

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A few days ago, Germar Rudolf indiscreetly revealed on the Holocaust Handbooks site that he has "submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC blog" to Carlo Mattogno for review for his already translated and edited, but not yet published English edition of his Einsatzgruppen book. I don't want to miss the opportunity to add to this list his (mis)treatment of Sonderkommando Lange. I have already blogged extensively on SK Lange, but I will again roll out some of it in this posting specifically to address Mattogno's Italian edition of his Einsatzgruppen book.

Scrolling through the footnotes (Mattogno, Gli Einsatzgruppen nei territori orientali occupati, parte I, p. 279 - 286), it strikes right away that his knowledge of literature is marginal, his use of documents selective and his study of testimonial evidence virtually non-existent.

His main source is the more than 30 years old article Mathias Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden (1987). He does not use or know in this context more recent works specifically on the killing of mentally ill people and SK Lange, like
  • Rieß, Die Anfänge der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens in Danzig und Wartheland 1939/40 (1995)
  • Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Warthegau 1939-1945 (2006)
  • Topp et al., Die Provinz Ostpreußen und die nationalsozialistische "Euthanasie" SS-"Aktion Lange" und "Aktion T4", Medizinhistorisches Journal, 43 (2008) 
  • Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust (2012)  [only cited later on]
  • Leidinger, Das Schicksal der polnischen Psychiatrie unter deutscher Besatzung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Psychatrische Praxis, 41 (2014)
  • Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof (2015)
Mattogno pours in some snippets from Gerlach's Kalkulierte Morde and Longerich's Holocaust - not exactly specialist literature on the subject - and some British intercepts of radio signals. But this does not change the overall picture that he mainly stuck in the 80s, both in terms of literature knowledge and his method, that does not seem to have advanced since then.

His limited knowledge of sources combined with his usual double standard, systematic misinterpretation, destructive approach of dismissing evidence for no real reason without offering any own narrative seems to provide him with the false certainty that he has somehow neutralised the momentum of SK Lange on gas vans and the Holocaust. 

On 18 October 1940, the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Warthegau Wilhelm Koppe wrote to his counterpart in Königsberg that "the so called Sonderkommando Lange...was ordered to Soldau in East Prussia from 21 May to 8 June 1940, according to the agreement made with the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and during that time evacuated 1,558 patients from the Soldau transit camp". In a later letter to Himmler's staff of 22 February 1941, Koppe speaks of having taken over "1,558 burdensome persons for the purpose of placing them somewhere else" and of "transportation costs and other expenses for each person to be transferred" (see documents 2, 4 and 5 here).

On these documents, Mattogno argues that "evacuated" is not an euphemism for killing because those other terms "refer to a real transfer" ("Tuttavia la lettera menzionata sopra parla esplicitamente di 'alloggiare altrove' e di 'costi di trasporto', locuzioni che rimandano ad un trasferimento reale", p. 285)

Illogic!

If the term evacuation was an euphemism for killing, which is what Mattogno wants to refute, then so would be "placing somewhere else" and "transferred" (the extermination did require transport costs, so this is not necessarily an euphemism). These other phrases do not show a "real transfer" other than "evacuation" would do. There is no story offered in the docs to support the claim that any transport out of Soldau took place, like actual transport means, routes, destination, handover etc. 

Koppe's staff even refrained from using the default cover up story of evacuation to the Generalgouverment. Instead they came up only with the unspecific "placing them somewhere else", which could mean anything from a lodging in a five star hotel in Berlin to burying in the next nearest forest, depending on the context. 

Lacking internal confirmation of "a real transfer" in the documents, the way to rule out the use of euphemisms were to use external evidence showing that those 1,558 patients were  transferred from Soldau and accommodated elsewhere (alive!). Such evidence does not exist though. 

Mattogno goes on to cite several documents that Soldau was a transit camp for Jews and Poles, and concludes that "the transit camp was real, like the evacuations, and is part of a real historical context" ("Dunque il campo di transito era reale, al pari delle evacuazioni, e si inquadra in un contesto storico reale", p. 286).

There is no doubt that Soldau was also a transit camp, but this does not settle what happened to the mentally ill people sent to this place, does not rule out that they have been exterminated and does not establish that this killing was not camouflaged as "evacuation" in the correspondence. The fact that Soldau was a transit camp would only add some probability to "a real transfer" of the mentally ill patients - if the evidence to the contrary were lacking (see below). 

Mattogno himself cites documents that show that Soldau was also a killing site. One document states that two Poles had been shot on 14.9.41 in the camp, another explains that "arbitrary shootings were carried out" in Soldau. Transit camp to heaven, perhaps?

But a lot more is ignored by Mattogno:
  • The Koppe correspondence is marked as "Secret State Affair". There was nothing severely secret about transferring mentally ill people, which was the cover story anyway.
  • On Koppe's letter to Himmler's staff, they wrote "urgent! telephone conversation with Obf. Brack". Brack was in charge of the Euthanasia.
  • Another doc in the same file states that "the Reichsführer-SS has placed particular emphasis on the care of these men [of SK Lange] assigned to this burdensome task". Transporting mentally ill patient might not have been fun for the Gestapo, but "burdensome task", seriously?

    (one may also wonder why the deportation of mentally ill patients was not rather a job for paramedics, asylum staff and the ordinary police, but for men of the Security Police and Security Service - previously engaged in tracking down and killing Polish resistance fighters)
  • A file on SS investigations on misconduct in Soldau contains contemporary interrogations dated June 1943 of Otto Rasch, inspector of the Security police in Königsberg in 1940 and his adjutant Horst Schlegel (see documents 11 and 12 here).

    According to Schlegel, Heydrich "agreed with the liquidation of these persons [members of the Polish intelligentsia] in the camp of Soldau." Also interesting, "for the sake of camouflaging, the Poles in question had to sign a declaration of the content that they agreed with their deportation to the Generalgouvernement", i.e. the killing of people in Soldau was to be systematically camouflaged as transportation to the Generalgouverment.

    Rasch added: "I had established the Soldau transit camp especially for the purpose of carrying out unostentatiously the necessary liquidations".

    And the most juicy part from Schlegel:
    "The mentally ill prisoners, who had been sent on special order, were liquidated by a special Kommando of the Inspekteur of Posen, under the constant supervision of SS-Obergruppenführer Redies. In my opinion, around 600 prisoners died and were liquidated in the camp. Excluded from this are the mentally ill prisoners."
    And Rasch again: "...insane persons were transferred to the camp on special order and shot".

Thus, Soldau was not only a "transit camp", but it was also an extermination camp for Poles and mentally ill people. In fact, the transit camp was an excellent smoke screen to cover the liquidations (
sSo good that it fools certain persons like Mattogno still today). Those "1,558 burdensome persons" were exterminated by SK Lange according to contemporary Nazi sources.

Towards West-German investigators, Koppe admitted that Sonderkommando Lange was killing people, but denied he had anything to do with it (interrogation of 2 February 1960, BArch B 162/3243, p. 138 etc). Since his involvement already follows from the correspondence well known at the time, this would have been an awful bad defense strategy, if there was nothing sinister with SK Lange in the first place. If Lange did nothing bad, Koppe's defence should have been able to find enough people who could confirm that Lange's work was just to drive around mentally ill patients - instead of denying what was suggested by contemporary documents. Indeed, witnesses, who observed Lange's team at work, guessed or knew there was something fishy when members of a secret service packed mentally ill patients into a closed box with strange pipes running under the chassis.

Some denier might say now: okay, so SK Lange killed mentally ill people, still no big H.

Well, the problem for deniers is just starting here. Why would the Security Police in East-Prussia hire a special commando from Posen to shoot mentally ill people in a camp that shot Poles anyway?  Lange had to employ a special killing method suitable for victims, who were otherwise too much of a burden for executioners usually only shooting men fit for military service. 

This is also evident from radio signals of the German paramilitary forces intercepted by the British (see documents 6 - 10 here): 
  • the Higher SS and Police Leader Center requested Lange's special commando all the way from Posen to Baranavichy (some 600 km) "to get a personal demonstration of L[ange]'s procedure".
  • the Wehrmacht High Command requested "to sent Sonderkommando Lange with suitable repair [recte: apparatus] for the clearing of three of their asylums near Novgorod" in Russia (about 1,200 km from Posen)
It stands to reason that von dem Bach-Zelewski and the Wehrmacht High Command did not call for Lange to shoot people, which was the default killing technique in the East anyway. 

Likewise, Rasch's statement that the mentally ill patients were shot in Soldau is questionable, since this would have not required a team from the Gestapo Posen. He apparently meant to obfuscate the actual killing method, which was nothing that the SS investigators had to know for this case.

According to testimonial evidence, SK Lange employed mobile gas chambers to kill its victims in the Warthegau. They used gas bottles injecting carbon monoxide, as it was done during the Euthanasia in the Reich with stationary gas chambers (see also Contemporary German Documents on Carbon Monoxide Gas and Bottles Employed for the Nazi Euthanasia). The gas van was a tractor pulling a closed trailor with the inscription "Kaiser's Kaffee Geschäft" at the sides.

Side note: Mattogno trumps up the idea on the Kaiser's Kaffee Geschäft inscription that "la denominazione in questione fosse la deformazione di 'LC-Koffer'". (Mattogno, Gli Einsatzgruppen nei territori orientali occupati, parte I, p.280). Perhaps he misunderstood the German historian Christian Gerlach, who mentioned LC-Koffer in a footnote on gas vans, however, in a different sense. Or perhaps it came just off the top of his head. In any case, there is neither any evidence nor any reason nor any sense that "Kaiser's Kaffee Geschäft" was a "deformation of LC-Koffer". It has been clearly described by multiple witnesses as written on a vehicle of Sonderkommando Lange. It's already far-fetched to assume that these were even aware of the military vehicle with a "LC-Koffer". 
  
The next problem for Holocaust denial is that Lange did not stop after clearing mental asylums, but went on to "visit" with his gas vans Jewish communities in the Warthegau. Then they realized it makes much more sense that instead of stirring up the whole Warthegau with his bloody business to settle down somewhere and bring the Jewish victims (and some Sinti and Roma) to him. This place was Kulmhof (Chelmno) and the extermination camp killed some 100,000 unfit Jews until Summer 1942 with three gas vans (now running on engine exhaust) (see documents and other evidence here). At the top of it, Kulmhof was also the breeding ground for Aktion 1005, the Nazis systematic destruction of their extermination sites. 

The operation of Kulmhof extermination camp says volumes about the Nazi extermination policy, mass killing technique and reliability of evidence and its historiographic evaluation - as well as the flaws of Holocaust denial. The reality of other National Socialistic extermination camps and gas vans operating among the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied East is then only a mere formality and an inviteable consequence. In this sense, tipping the "domino" SK Lange rapidly tears down Mattogno's entire card house of Holocaust denial.

Mattogno's Distortion of Orders in his Italian Einsatzgruppen Book

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An English translation of Carlo Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen study, which had previously appeared in Italian in two parts (1 and 2) has just been translated and is undergoing "author proofing" before being made available as Holocaust Handbook No. 39. However, towards the end of October 2018, Germar Rudolf wrote that "We have submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC Blog -- to the author for his review, and are awaiting his feedback [see screenshot at the foot of this article]." What are these issues? Many of them are likely to pertain to Roberto's detailed refutation of the Jaeger Report chapter. Some may also relate to Hans'demolition of Mattogno on gas vans. This posting focuses on the Italian text's distortions of German orders, which Mattogno misrepresents because he wishes to convince his readers that the orders were intended to shoot Jews not "as Jews" but because they were assumed by the Germans to be aiding Bolshevism and the partisans (pp.10-11). Given that I have posted previously on Mattogno and Graf's old habits on this theme, it is possible that Rudolf wants Mattogno to address it. The distortions regarding orders can be shown by presenting them in chronological sequence.

Hitler's goals for the campaign against the USSR had been conveyed in his meeting with Wehrmacht leaders on March 30th, 1941, which I analyzed here. Mattogno alludes to this meeting in his Italian text but only indirectly through a quotation from the secondary literature (p.17) and he only cites this passage in order to argue that the Germans only shot Soviet Jews, not Polish ones, repeating an argument that was made earlier by Graf in Treblinkahere. However, several early reports show Polish Jews being targeted; for example, a report from Einsatzgruppe B dated July 2nd cites Heydrich's Einsatzbefehl No. 2 as stating that self-cleansing actions (pogroms incited with German support) in Polish areas should target "Bolsheviks and Jews", not "Bolshevik Jews." An introductory note stated that this was recommended for Einsatzgruppe B's area of operation by "17th Army Command", namely Stülpnagel.[1] Moreover, this was not the first order to separate "Bolsheviks and Jews" in this way. Only three days after Hitler's March 30th briefing to the Wehrmacht, an agreement between Heydrich and Wagner was published in the guidelines to the troops in the Balkan states stating that "Communists and Jews" were to be among groups that were targeted by the Security Police there.[2] This was followed on May 19 by the Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia, which mandated "ruthless and vigorous measures against Bolshevik inciters, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews and the complete elimination of all active and passive resistance."[3] This order is quoted by Jürgen Förster in an article Mattogno cites (p.58) but Mattogno omits any mention of the order from his text. Such orders refute Mattogno's claim that Jews were not shot "as Jews" because they show that Jews were not merged with Communists in these policies but were placed alongside them as a group with equal but distinct enemy characteristics whose origins were racial not political: a Gegenrasse.

Orders and organization escalated together in the month of July when Himmler made massive increases to manpower allocated to shootings and issued appropriate orders. The fact that this manpower derived from Himmler's Kommandostab and was directly controlled by Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF) subordinated to Himmler rather than Heydrich's RHSA is a crucial refutation of Mattogno's premise that shooting policies can be inferred from the composition and strength of the Einsatzgrupppen alone. Although Mattogno mentions the number of native auxiliaries deployed in the occupied USSR, and includes the 44,125 persons shot by the forces of the HSSPF in August 1941 in his table of mass shootings, he does not integrate the significance of these facts into his arguments or deal with the explanations given in the secondary literature as to their role in the escalation in the scope and volume of shootings. He knowingly ignores this manpower when claiming falsely that:
The general picture that emerges is this: you can not seriously believe that Himmler had ordered as exclusive or even primary task to a group of about 3,000 soldiers to exterminate millions of Jews in an area that extended for about 1500 km of latitude and for about 1,300 longitude, although they had to be assisted by other units of the SS and Police, which still had the primary task of ensuring the safety of the Wehrmacht and of pursuing anti-partisan struggle (p.171).
This is a lame attempt by Mattogno to cling to an old denier meme that there were only 3,000 men committed to the killing actions. The attempt fails because the literature has shown conclusively that the HSSPF and their Kommandostab units became the main drivers of killing in many areas of Belorussia and Ukraine, not merely providing assistance to the Einsatzkommandos. Infact, the Einsatzkommandos were ultimately subordinate to the HSSPF, which conducted some of the largest massacres of 1941. Mattogno himself has to cite this fact in the next chapter when his table reveals that the 23,600 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk were shot by forces under HSSPF Sued, as were 10,000 at Dnjepropetrovsk and 15,000 at Rovno, whilst Jeckeln also oversaw the killing of 4,000 Jews at Rumbula, of which 820 were Reich Jews (p.250). Mattogno also lies outrageously about the 44,125 people shot by HSSPF Russia South, claiming that "nothing is known" about them when infact they are documented in daily reports that are available online in a collection that Mattogno uses several times in the book.[4]

One of the most important moments of escalation that Mattogno fails to address in good faith was the Pripet marshes campaign which Himmler personally instigated in late July 1941 using the SS Cavalry Brigade under his own ultimate command. On July 11, Montua passed on an order by the HSSPF that male Jews aged between 17 and 45 were to be shot as looters.[5] This reflected Himmler's belief that the Soviets had resettled criminals into the marshes. On July 27, Himmler's Kommandosonderbefehl specified that people who were "racially and humanly inferior" were to be shot if they were suspected of supporting the partisans; their villages were to be burned down and the women and children removed.[6] By August 1st, this had become an order from Himmler to kill the women, but the means of killing were ambiguous: "All Jews must be shot. Drive Jewish women into the swamps."[7] Lombard passed on this order to his brigade, stating that "No male Jew stays alive, no residual family in the villages."[8] The killing reports specified "looters", showing that the guiding 'a priori' assumption was still Jewish criminality rather than documented partisan activity:
Jewish looters were shot. Only a few craftsmen who were working in repair shops of the Wehrmacht were left behind. To drive women and children into the swamps did not have the desired effect as the swamps were not deep enough [for them] to sink. In a depth of 1 metre there was solid ground (possibly sand) in most cases so that sinking [bodies] was not possible.[9]
Pieper cites a perpetrator statement that conveys the context in which the killings were understood:
They were shot because they were Jews. There cannot have been any other reason from my point of view. It is out of the question that they supported the partisans or were partisans themselves. I don’t know anything about Jews resisting the German troops at all. According to my observations they always were friendly and loyal. And most of them were women and children down to the smallest baby. With them, too, there were no exceptions made [and they all were killed].[10]
The racial underpinning of this action shows that the phrases 'looters' and 'support for the partisans' were used as cover for shooting Jews "because they were Jews." Some shooters may have reassured themselves that they will killing Jews for military reasons, but the overall pattern was an escalation that encompassed all Jews regardless of any rational basis for defining them as looters or partisan colluders. The bogus nature of the partisan warfare excuse is shown by the fact that, when Fegelein reported on the unit's killings in the two-week period from late July, it recorded 13,788 dead "plunderers" against 714 prisoners captured.[11]

Mattogno commits a typical fallacy of excluded middle by assuming that any action that included an anti-partisan component could not also be a "Jew hunt." Infact his modus operandi throughout the Italian screed is to deny that any action can be "both A and B" not "A or B." The Germans killed partisans but they killed far larger numbers of Jews "as Jews" because they believed the Jews were the racial root of the enemy and had to be killed on racial grounds, as I noted here.

Mattogno accepts the excuse that the Jews had been "giving support to the partisans", but this was an a priori assumption by the Germans that was never validated by evidence. Mattogno's interpretation is refuted by the racial underpinning of the orders, which ultimately use 'looters' and 'support for the partisans' as cover for shooting Jews because they were Jews. Some shooters may have reassured themselves that they were killing Jews for military reasons, but the overall pattern was an escalation that encompassed all Jews regardless of any rational basis for defining them as looters or partisan colluders. In addition, Jews and partisans [Freischaerler] were named separately in some reports. For example, the report for 28.7 to 3.8 stated, "3,000 Juden und Freischaerler erschossen."[12] Mattogno has seen this document because he cites the Magill report of 12.8.41 from the same YVA folder but he still claims the Jews were shot purely as a "scorched earth" policy to deprive the partisans of support (p.117).

Mattogno also attempts to discredit the documentation concerning the Pripet marshes amount to a spurious forgery allegation concerning Himmler's order to "Drive Jewish women into the swamps." Mattogno (p.119) commits a common self-contradiction within Holocaust denial of assuming that a document is simultaneously implausible and forged, going against the logic that a forger would actually strive as much as possible to make the document plausible. In this case, Mattogno believes Himmler would never have ordered drowning in a swamp, but he sees no contradiction in claiming that a forger would apply that order to Himmler's name. Moreover, Mattogno ignores the fact that driving Jews into "the morass" appears in Hitler's table talk of October 25.[13] The image was clearly in the mind of leading Nazis, either as metaphor or as a mode of killing in the swamps.

Mattogno also detaches this action from those that were happening concurrently in Ukraine, which included the killing of children at Bila Tserkva, as I noted here. Mattogno infact systematically dodges the documents that make clear the inclusion of children in killings, or is forced to claim that any such documentation is forged, as with the second Jaeger Report. He is therefore stuck in the same denial mode as as the CODOH regulars whose knowledge of the occupied USSR is slim to none, despite his ability to cite documents no other denier has seen. This is ultimately because his ideological bias is the same as theirs and he is unable to face the Nazi regime's true degree of genocidal criminality.

Screenshot of Rudolf's note:



[1] Operational Situation Report [Ereignismeldung, hereafter EM] 10, p.2, extract at: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/operational-situation-report-ussr-10.
[2] Walter Manoschek, "Serbien ist judenfrei": Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42 (Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte, Band 38), Oldenbourg, 1995, pp.41-42, citing OKH, GenStdH/GenQu., Abt.Kriegsverwaltg.Nr.II/0308/41g.K.Chefs.bis.zum>>Operationsbeginn<<, vom 2.4.1941.
[3] Translation in Jürgen Förster, ‘The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination against the Soviet Union,’ Yad Vashem Studies 14, 1981, p.12.
[4]YVA O.53/86. Mattogno cites this folder on page 117.
[5] Henning Herbert Pieper, 'The SS Cavalry Brigade and its operations in the Soviet Union, 1941-1942', PhD dissertation, University of Sheffield, June 2012, pp.93-94, citing Order from the commander of Police Regiment Centre, 11 July, 1941, in: VUA, N POL.RGT. (1), file 7.
[6] Kommandosonderbefehl. Richtlinien für die Durchkämmung und Durchstreifung von Sumpfgebieten durch Reitereinheiten, 28.7.41, BArch B162/827, pp. 421-424; Unsere Ehre heißt Treue - Kriegstagebuch des Kommandostabes Reichsführer SS Tätigkeitsberichte der 1. und 2. SS-Inf-Brigade, der 1.SS-Kav.-Brigade und von Sonderkommandos der SS, pp. 219-220.
[7] Pieper, p.138, citing Radio message, KavRgt. 2 an Reitende Abteilung, 1 August, 1941 (10 a.m.), BArchF, RS 3-8/36.
[8] Abteilungsbefehl Nr. 28 (Fernschreiben) des Befehlshabers der Reitenden Abteilung des SS-Kavallerieregiments 1, gez. Lombard, vom 1. 8. 1941, 18.03 Uhr (Abschrift), VEJ 7, pp. 227-228 (Dok. 51).
[9] Bericht über Einsatz Pripjet-Sümpfe, Unsere Ehre heißt Treue, p. 230.
[10] Pieper, p.143, citing Vernehmung von Kurt Ziegler vom 8.7. 1964, in: BArchL, B 162/5539, p. c85.
[11] SS-Kav-Brigade 1 an den HSSPF Mitte, Abschlussmeldung, 13.8.41, Unsere Ehre heißt Treue, p.224.
[12] Kommandostab RF-SS, Abt Ia, Betrifft: Bericht des Kdo.Stabes RF-SS über die Tätigkeit für die Zeit vom 28.7. bis 3.8.1941 einschl., YVA O.53.86, p.74.
[13] Cited in Peter Longerich, 'Hitler's Role in the Persecution of the Jews', expert opinion submitted to the Irving-Lipstadt trial, online at https://www.hdot.org/longrole/#note_longRole16.4_n149.

Bunkers, dugouts, Mattogno's honesty.

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In "Carlo Mattogno, the failed Dragon-slayer" I wrote in regard to Mattogno's claim that the term "Bunkers" (in relation to the first two extermination installations in Birkenau, Bunker 1 and Bunker 2) was invented by the Poles and forced on Hoess:
The problem for Mattogno is that Hoess did mention the term "Bunker" before he was transferred to Poland. Here's a quote from the joint interrogation of Otto Moll and Rudolf Hoess at Nuremberg on 16 April 1946, by Lieut.-Colonel Smith W. Brookhart, as published in R. Overy, Interrogations. The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945, 2001, p. 394:
Q. How does that figure strike you, Hoess?
A. It is impossible for him to know the exact figures, but they appear to me to be much too small as far as I can remember today. The people buried in the two big mass graves of the so-called dugouts one and two, amounted to 106,000 or 107,000 people.
[...]
Q. Hoess, what do you think would be the correct figures?
A. Moll, in my opinion, cannot possibly have any idea of the number of killings in the dugouts where he was working and responsible. At any rate, they were far, far too low - that is, Moll's figure.
Obviously "dugouts one and two" are Bunkers 1 and 2, and the translator was clueless about what Hoess meant. And why would that be if there was such a grand conspiracy? So much for Mattogno's claim about Hoess.
In his response Mattogno characterized my explanation as follows:
He argues that Rudolf Hoess used the term "Bunker" before his extradition to Poland (contrary to what I said) and cites an interrogation of the former commandant of Auschwitz on April 16, 1946 where, however, the term "Bunker" does not appear but rather "dugouts one and two". Romanov said: "Obviously "dugouts one and two" are Bunkers 1 and 2, and the translator was clueless about what Hoess meant." The explanation is quite feeble. The fact is that the text does not mention the term "Bunker", and here we are speaking precisely about terminology.
During the interrogation of 1 April 1946 Hoess spoke of "two old farms", and on 11 March 1946 of "two old farmbuildings". These terms correspond to the German Bauernhäuse, so that the term "dugouts" is explained more by an inappropriate translation of Bauerhaus than that of "Bunker".
In my response I explained, citing dictionaries:
"Dugout" is one of the direct English translations of the German term "Bunker". Indeed, the very English word "bunker" in the military sense of "dugout" came from German [...] Hence, in context, it is obvious that originally Höss used the term "Bunker" which for a native English speaker made sense as a dugout.
Lo and behold: in his subsequent book Commandant of Auschwitz - Rudolf Höss, His Torture and His Forced Confessions (Nov. 2017, p. 227) Mattogno adopts my "quite feeble" explanation without any further ado!
Most likely, Höss had used the term “bunker” earlier on April 16, 1946, when he spoke about “dugouts” 1 and 2 [...] The term in question, “dugout,” is in fact the English equivalent of the German word “Bunker,” whose primary meaning is “concrete shelter” (“betonierter Schutzraum”; Brockhaus…, p. 86), such as a fortress or an air-raid shelter.
No acknowledgment of his previous conspiracy theory about Poles forcing the term on Hoess (he concocts an entirely new one instead, which is even less convincing) and no acknowledgment that he was wrong about my explanation being "quite feeble" either.

Carlo has shown his true face again.

Mattogno's Major Problem with a Gas Van Document

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Among the contemporary German documents on homicidal gas vans is a letter from Walther Rauff to the Criminal Technical Institute at the Reich Criminal Police Office of 26 March 1942 on "special wagons" and "gas bottles with carbon monoxide". Since the document challenges a core belief of Holocaust denial of no Nazi homicidal gas-chambers, it had to be declared dubious or insinuated forged by leading deniers (debunked in Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Van: Part V: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute with updates 1, 2, 3 and specifically on Mattogno here).

One of the arguments: the head of the Security Police motor pool Friedrich Pradel is referred to as "Major" in the letter, allegedly a false rank. Recap what Santiago Alvarez and Carlo Mattogno - one parroting the other - claimed on the issue:

Alvarez, The Gas Vans (September 2011), p.298:


Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, 1st edition (June 2014), p. 146 and 2nd edition (October 2016), p. 145:


You have to have hand it to Mattogno that he sounds maximum confident. It's not that he doubts that Pradel was a Major or that most likely Pradel was not a Major, but "Pradel was not a 'Major' in any way". Boom. You can really sense this guy just has to know what he is talking about. 

By the way, in case your eyes have been wandering to the end of the quotes, desperately looking for a reference number or something, there is none. Such a clear statement advanced with full confidence and then not even a footnote, wouldn't that be foolish unless it were common knowledge and fact without the slightest doubt? 

Let's do the test. Fortunately, several files on Pradel have survived the war, among these his personnel SS officer file (BArch R 9361-III/548320), a personnel police file (BArch ZR/93) and an RSHA file on internal affairs (BArch R 58/863).

Now I have already said it, if there is a personnel file of the police, then he also had to have a police rank at some point. It's a big file full of CVs, personnel reviews, officer's training orders, his delegation to the Security Police, his take-over by the Security Police, his delegation to the Waffen-SS and last but not least also of his promotions.

The Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler proposed the appointment of Pradel to Major of the police on 4 February 1942, which was granted by Hitler's office at the bottom of the document six days later:

The Reichs Minister of the Interior
Pol.O-Kdo.II P II (2a) Pra.VI 23.                        

Proposal for the appointment of Hauptmann der Schutzpolizei Friedrich Pradel to Major der Schutzpolizei.

[...]

The head of the party's chancellery has no objections against the appointment.

Berlin, 4 February 1942.

On behalf

[signature "H.Himmler"]

[...]

In the name of the German people I appoint the above mentioned official. The promotion document is to be prepared with today's date and my signature as facsimile.

Führer-HQ, 10 February 1942.
The Führer and Reichs Chancellor, signed Adolf Hitler
(BArch ZR/93, p. 157, my translation and emphasis).


On 18 February 1942, the promotion was communicated to the Main office of the Orderly Police informing that "the Führer has appointed the Hauptmann der Schutzpolizei Pradel, Friedrich as Major" (BArch ZR/93, p. 38).

A copy of the promotion document can be found in an RSHA file:
Certified true copy

In the name of the German People I appoint the Hauptmann der Schutzpolizei Friedrich Pradel as Major der Schutzpolizei.

[...]

Führer-HQ, 10 February 1942

The Führer
signed Adolf Hitler

signed H.Himmler
on behalf of the Reichs Minister of the Interior

For the correctness of the copy
[signature "Karge"]
office employee

[rubber stamp "Der Chef des Sicherheitsdienstes"]
(BArch R 58/863, p. 17, my translation and emphasis)


On 12 March 1942, his superior Walther Rauff (head of RSHA department II D) informed the SD-office at the RSHA of the promotion:
II D Rf/Hb.                                       Berlin, 12 March 1942

1.) Letter to the SD office in-house

Subject: SS-Hauptsturmführer und Major der Schutzpolizei Pradel.

The submitted assessments of 1 May 1941 and 16 February 1942 are still valid. Pradel has been promoted to Major der Schutzpolizei with effect from 1 January 1942. His promotion to SS-Sturmbannführer is supported.

2.) To the files II D

[signature "Rauff"]

SS-Obersturmbannführer.
(BArch R 58/863, p. 19, my translation and emphasis; note that this document contains the same office/author identification "II D Rf/Hb" as the letter in question further confirming its formal authenticity and again directly refuting Alvarez, who is also relied on by Mattogno)


These docs clearly prove that Pradel was a Major of the police when the letter of 26 March 1942 was written with the remark to forward it to "Major Pradel".

Once again the duo Alvarez and Mattogno has been shown to have used a completely baseless argument to attack an incriminating German document.

Germar Rudolf's fraudulent treatment of the Balard shooting range footage.

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In the mockumentary "Probing the Holocaust", the transcript of which is available here, Germar Rudolf presents the footage of the Balard shooting range in order to "prove" that the Allies were engaged in an outright Holocaust-related fraud.

The Balard shooting range was built in 1938 in Issy-les-Moulineaux, at the boulevard Victor in the XVth arrondissement of Paris for training police offcers. It was demolished in 1964. During the Nazi occupation it served as a place of torture and executions.

In his mockumentary Rudolf brings up the postwar footage of the shooting range during his segment on the gas chamber of Dachau (which will be dealt with at a later date). He tries to prove that the footage proves that the Allied Psychological Warfare divisions were faking evidence of Nazi atrocities, and thus wants to dismiss the Dachau gas chamber as another such fake.

Let's take a look at his arguments.

This footage was recorded on October 25, 2017 from the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. When searching their video archive for the term “gas chamber” the first result is this video. It’s titled “Exhumation; inspection of gas chambers; Lt. Hodges.”
This is footage taken after the liberation of Paris of an alleged Gestapo Torture Chamber near the Eiffel Tower. In the description, we read:

“World War II interiors of gas chamber used by the Germans in the execution of prisoners. Demonstrating method of securing prisoners in gas chambers. Various Close-ups, pipes leading into room.”
And
“hand prints and scratches dug into cement wall of gas chamber by the victims.”
Fragment from the video.

Here are those ominous pipes. They are rather fancy, but not very functional. Most of all, they would have been within reach of the victims, and wouldn’t have survived very long, because they would have been demolished very quickly. Also notice all those windows illuminating this room. How long would those window panes have lasted if the victims inside trashed the place and tried to break out?
Fragment of the video.
For that footage, they even pumped some innocuous, but dramatic-looking smoke through the pipes.
Fragment of the video.
Here are the handprints in the cement, allegedly created by gassing victims during their death throes. Needless to say, handprints can only be made in fresh mortar, and only insane people would use a room as an execution chamber whose walls had just been plastered.
Fragment of the video.
These gas pipes and handprints are not evidence of Nazi atrocities, they are evidence of a deliberate Allied psychological warfare campaign to demonize the defeated Germans. Because this hoax is so obvious, no mainstream historian has ever taken that claim seriously. That does not prevent the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum from presenting it to an unsuspecting audience, though. Unfortunately, most people just accept whatever the government, media, or religion tell them to believe.
So, what was necessary for the Americans, who had liberated Paris several months earlier, to create that footage? First of all, they must have had a plan. Then, they must have had at their disposal the necessary hardware to create the film set: pipes, smoke-generating devices, and some workers able to install that hardware and to create a cement wall with handprints.
In contrast to that utterly unknown Gestapo torture chamber in Paris, Dachau was one of the best-known German concentration camps.
Now that we've seen Rudolf's presentation, let's pick it apart.

1. Rudolf's main deception consists in applying the description by unknown persons of unknown competence in charge of writing film descriptions as the last word on and the only true interpretation of what is shown in the footage.

(Side note: the original description already contains the cement reference but qualifies the gas chamber description with "what appears to be" - these words disappear in the USHMM description; the end result is therefore the work of several individuals.)

For Rudolf's arguments apply solely to the description, and if they are valid and sound, then it does not follow that the Allies faked anything; it only follows that the descriptions are false.

2. Case in point: the handprints on the wall. The description claims they are in cement. Rudolf runs with this. He never asks: how does the author of the description even know that? Does the footage claim this? Of course not. It's just what some incompetent archive employee wrote, nothing more. This has zero bearing on the interpretation of the footage itself.

Indeed, had Rudolf done even minuscule research, he would have found that the handprints were in the asbestos layer which covered the wall in order to make it sound-proof (makes sense at a shooting range, no?).

Adam Rayski, author of the small book Au stand de tir. Le massacre des résistants. Paris 1942–1944, quotes from the report by the police commissar Henri Danty dated August 31, 1944, shortly after the liberation of Paris:
Behind the premises of the Ministry of Air, Boulevard Victor in Paris XV arrondissement, there are two shooting ranges, one 200 meter long, the other 50 meter long.
Yesterday the Air Force unit occupying the premises under the command of Commander Marette conducted excavations at the first range and has already exhumed 4 voluminous coffins appearing to contain several bodies each.
The second range was the place of execution and I made the following observations:
At the firing point and over a length of ten meters, and over their entire height, the walls are lined with a thick layer of asbestos and exhibit hundreds of hand prints up to the height of 2,5m.
This part of the range appears to have been closed by a partition isolating it from the rest of the range.
It is impossible to imagine after what tortures the people who were brought there jumped against the wall and left the imprint of their hands in the asbestos.
At the firing slope there are 3 execution posts bearing countless bullet marks; one of them is cut in half by bullets. On these posts hang the bands and the ropes intended for the tortured [...]
It is urgent to proceed with methodical excavations in the ground of these ranges and also to explore the nearby maneuvering area and the sewers, as it is likely that many corpses are buried there.
I think I have to suggest that, in the aftermath of the incredible atrocities that probably occurred in these places, it would probably be appropriate to invite a neutral body to attend the findings.
Already from the first newspaper items about this wall the matter is clear, they talk of the asbestos-covered wall or "a wall covered with a thick, fibre-like material"
Combat, 31.08.1944, p. 2.
Sunday Times (Perth, WA), 03.09.1944, p.2.
Beckley Post-Herald, 20.09.1944

Same was mentioned in some of the "newsreels" in which the footage was used.


What kind of measures were applied to the people in this room is a matter of a debate, but it is a secondary issue in the context of Rudolf's methodology, so we will just state that there is zero evidence of fakery as far as the handprints are concerned, and leave it at that.

3. Same applies to the room with the pipes. There is nothing in the footage that says this room was a gas chamber. This is, once again, a groundless interpretation of some archive employee of unknown qualifications.

What was this room? Rayski has the following photo of the room with a comment that according to numerous specialists the objects on the photo are furnaces (also confirmed in this testimony).

What purpose these furnaces might have been designed for and then actually served is an issue for further research and we won't speculate on this further (except to note they might have been totally innocent devices). But it stands to reason that a furnace room can have some sort of a ventilation system, whether exhaust, or supply (e.g. for oxygen-rich air for incineration).

An alternative explanation was offered by some of the French that the pipes could introduce hot air into the room for torture purposes.

The Winnipeg Tribune, 04.09.1944.
When Cyril Connolly visited the place, he was also told of "the huge furnace for blowing in hot air", (Horizon, May 1945, p. 296).

This claim was a mere hearsay/speculation, as is made clear in the contemporary reporting. The lack of the gassings in the reporting is telling though.

What about the smoke? We don't know the context here, and this lack of knowledge obviously doesn't automatically lead to a conclusion of foul play.

First of all, it is not at all clear that the smoke is coming from the pipes. The smoke is in fact seen in the frames where it is (seemingly) not coming from the pipes (see the footage at the times specified below, since the presence of smoke is better seen in motion).


The claim is apparently based on a few frames in which the smoke moves relative to the diffuser, thus creating a misleading impression for some that it comes from the diffuser, whereas actually the movement from within the diffuser cannot be observed when one looks carefully.



It can be hypothesized that the investigators were trying to start up the equipment in the room (whether the ventilation or something else) and due to, say, a faulty wire some motor (etc.) caught fire.

We simply lack the crucial context to answer the question with certainty. From this lack of context intellectually honest people cannot jump to "the smoke was staged" conclusion. For that claim there is zero evidence.

(As a side note, there were indeed rumors and hearsay about both the furnace room and the shooting range room having been used for gassings, which cannot, however, serve as a basis for positively claiming that such did indeed take place there. These rumors never entered any official record and are thus irrelevant to the current issue in any case.)

4. All the footage was most probably shot not later than 31.08.1944. In the 31.08.1944 report quoted above the commissar Danty wrote about the exhumation of 4 voluminous coffins on the previous day. We see these coffins in this footage.


As well as in this footage, which is explicitly dated to 31.08.1944.



Same people appear in most of the films.

The films certainly weren't shot "months" after the liberation, contrary to Rudolf's fraudulent assertion.

It is completely implausible that immediately after the liberation of Paris the Americans would have rushed to install fake walls and pipes somewhere and presented them to the members of the French police and the French Forces of the Interior, whom we see on all the footage. (Or were the latter supposed to be the collaborators in this "hoax"? Even less plausible. Especially in light of Danty's request to invite a neutral commission.)

5. Rudolf's "fakes for propaganda" claim does not make sense anyway. Professional propagandists are usually not dumber than the average folks.

Yet Rudolf wants us to believe that they created a cement wall with handprints (up to 2.5m height, at that) and would not have realized the stupidity of this during the (undoubtedly onerous) creation of this wall?

That they went to great lengths to install the pipes and staged a gassing (which, had it been an actual gassing, would have actually looked more impressive than mere handprints on a wall) but then, crucially, never, ever used it for propaganda (but did use the wall)? And never actually brought up the gassing claims anywhere?

I think it is clear that Rudolf lacks the basic common sense.

So let's sum up. Rudolf used video descriptions (an unreliable tertiary source) to dispute the authenticity of the footage (primary source), instead of relying on the primary source itself (which claims to show neither cement handprints, nor a gassing apparatus). Rudolf failed to do any research, which would have established that the handprints were made in asbestos, that the footage is extremely early and that the French police investigated the scene on the day of the discovery.

Instead he claimed with certainty that Americans installed a fake wall with handprints and fake pipes, and staged a fake gassing months after the liberation.

Then again, what else can one expect from a guy who used half a dozen fake PhDs in lieu of having a real one?

Bunker 2 Extermination Site in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Contemporary Photographs

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The Auschwitz State Museum has published a 26-page booklet dedicated to Bunker 2 in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Bartosik & Martyniak, "Biały domek". Historia zagłady w bunkrze II, 2017). As already suggested by the front cover, the gassing facility known as Bunker 2 (in some accounts also Bunker 5) has been spotted on a photograph taken by the SS - AFAIK its only appearance in a contemporary ground photograph (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Construction site in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1943 (Yad Vashem Archives, Photo Archives, Album FA157/344, Item 66393)


The photograph in question originates from the album of the Zentralbauleitung (central construction office) Auschwitz. It is labelled as showing the construction of sewage oxygenation basins (between crematorium 3 and "Kanada", the section for storing and sorting the plundered effects of the deported Jews) at the Yad Vashem Photo Archives. However, according to the booklet "Biały domek" it was taken at the construction site of the so-called Zentralsauna, the main hygienic facility in the camp.

What follows is my take on the photograph:

The skyline with two woods (the left one is farther away) corresponds indeed to what an observer from the sewage plant or Kanada/Zentralsauna complex looking west-northwest could see.

The photo was taken during the cold period with snow on the ground. According to documents in the publication The Architecture of Crime. The "Central Camp Sauna" in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the construction work begun on 3 March 1943 and employed an excavator to dig the pit for the cellar in the main tract. The temperature was -5°C on this day.

The nearest tree to the left on the photograph looks similar to one close to the Zentrasauna looking in the direction of the Bunker 2 site on a photograph taken in 1962. I cannot assign all visible single trees to those on 1944 aerial photographs. However, it is possible that some had been chopped down between 1943-44.

Considering the above points, the photograph was possibly or even likely taken from construction site of the Zentralsauna looking towards the woods in the north-west, as suggested in the booklet "Biały domek" (Figure 2) (alternatively it was taken from further South at the sewage plant).

Figure 2: Illustration indicating the position and direction of view of the photographer according to Bartosik & Martyniak, "Biały domek". Historia zagłady w bunkrze II, p.8; note that the illuminated cone cannot correspond to the actual field of view, which extends to the woods on the right.


Figure 3: Close-up of the white plastered house in Figure 1.

Figure 3 depicts a close-up of the house shown on the photograph. It looks similar to other farmhouses in the area (Figure 4). There is some similarity (but also differences) to a post-war drawing of Bunker 2 by the Jewish Sonderkommando prisoner David Olere (Figure 5). The house is apparently plastered in white, which is reported for Bunker 2 aka the "Little White House". Its position next to the woods and its orientation (looking approx. towards the edge of the house, with the long side to the left) corresponds to that of Bunker 2 on 1944 aerial photographs. On the other hand, its orientation does not correspond to the ruins of another house located some 20 m east of Bunker 2 (which apparently did not exist anymore at the time, though featured on a map of  March 1943, because else it should appear to its right, see Figure 6).

Taking all these things together, the little white house on the photograph seems to be the infamous Bunker 2, which was employed by the SS in Auschwitz since summer 1942 to exterminate Jewish people.

There could be a security screen partly masking the entrance to the gas chambers on the long side of the building, but the else open and relatively close view from the Zentralsauna construction site and the fact that crematorium 2 was going into operation in March 1943, when I think the photograph was taken, suggests that the gassing facility was not in operation anymore.

Figure 4: Drawing of house no. 647, Budy (Van Pelt & Dwork, Auschwitz. Von 1270 bis heute, p. 337).

Figure 5: David Olere, The Eyes of a Witness - A Painter in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz, p.34

Figure 6: Plan of Birkenau dated March 1943 document 15, Bartosik et al., The beginnings of the extermination of Jews in KL Auschwitz in the light of the source materials, p. 83


In addition to this ground photograph of 1943, Bunker 2 is shown on several aerial photographs shot between 31 May and 29 November 1944. The site was taken out of service after the crematoria took over the extermination just before or at the beginning of Spring 1943, but in May 1944 it was reactivated for the destruction of the Hungarian Jews to increase the killing and body disposal capacity of the camp.

Figure 7 compares the appearance of the Bunker 2 extermination site on 31 May and 25 August 1944. The area is mainly characterised by the gassing building (grey), two horse stables barracks (red), incineration sites (black), smaller barracks/barns (blue) and a thick security screen.

On 31 May 1944, the extermination area was still under construction and not completed yet. The horse stable barracks - for undressing and/or storing the clothing - have not been erected (the levelled ground for three barracks is visible as bright rectangles). The pentagon shaped area next to Bunker 2 is not completed and fully secured. To illustrate the incomplete nature of the site as of 31 May 1944, the perimeter as it later extends on 25 August 1944 is indicated with yellow lines. Some smoke is possibly rising from one of the incineration trenches indicating that the extermination site may have been already in operation (on this day about 9,000 Hungarian Jews arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau and about 10,000 the day before).

Figure 7: Aerial photographs of Bunker 2 of 31 May and 25 August 1944. Markings as follows: gray = Bunker 2 building; black = incineration sites; red = location of horse stable barracks; blue = barn/barrack-like structures (storage and SS compound); yellow = site perimeter on the 31 May 1944 photograph as it was on 25 August 1944.


The next known aerial photograph of 26 June 1944 shows that two barracks were erected and the perimeter was extended and secured/camouflaged (as far as it is visible on the published photo, which only shows the eastern half of the extermination area).

The 23 and 25 August 1944 aerial photographs are of good quality and provide a more detailed look at the site (Figure 7 and 8). The full extension of the pentagon-shaped area with security and camouflage fence is obvious, several structures which could be small barracks/barns/guard stand - probably the storage and SS compound of the site -, three incineration trenches north-west of Bunker 2, several stripes between the horse stable barracks and the entrance to the gas chambers (perhaps some garden, like at the crematoria, or benches for undressing?). Some spots along the security fence might be permanent guard posts, machine gun nests, small bomb shelters (the Soviet investigators believed to have identified such along the fence).

The roof of Bunker 2 was descending to all sides according to the ground photo (not just to the long sides as has been widely assumed). Taking into account that most of the north-eastern portion of the roof is well illuminated by the sun and thus only faintly visible against the light ground, the size of Bunker 2 corresponds aprox. to that of the ruin still found today.


Figure 8: Aerial photographs of Bunker 2 of 31 May, 23 August, 25 August, 13 September, 29 November 1944 and 19 February 1945 (for sources of the photos see Auschwitz-Birkenau Aerial Photographs).

Further aerial photographs of the area are compiled in Figure 8. On 13 September 1944, one of the incineration trenches was levelled indicating that Bunker 2 was about to get deactivated. On 29 November 1944, the body disposal sites are cleared, on 21 December 1944 the horse stable barracks are removed and the Bunker 2 building razed to the ground.

What is left on the aerial photograph of 19 February 1945, i.e. after Soviet liberation: a pit with an almost quadratic shape to the west of the former gas-chamber (also visible on prior aerial photographs) - perhaps serving as a water reservoir for fire fighting -, and a heap of wood/branches. The Soviet drawing illustrates the pile along the north-eastern side of the pentagon-shaped area found after the liberation of the camp. It was assumed to be "fuel wood for the cremation pit", but the aerial photos show that it was build up between 23 August 1944 and 29 November 1944, i.e. after the period of excessive deportations exceeding the capacity of the crematoria. It's conceivable that this is where remains of the dismantled security fence were dumped.  

Laura Loomer Makes Fool of Self, Defames Muslims, Doesn't Know History

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If you’re a seasoned kook-watcher like myself, you probably saw Laura Loomer’s protest at the Twitter headquarters last week, at which she chained herself to only one of the two front doors and wore a yellow star of David (she’s Jewish) to protest her unfair treatment by Twitter. Some Jews (myself included) took offense at this and expressed our opinion about it. But she really added insult to injury when she granted an interview to Stefan Molyneux to hash out her complaints.

I’ve written about Molyneux here before, so I won’t belabor the points about him except to say that he repeats in this video a recent claim he made about the yellow star of David not being an evocation of the Holocaust because (I paraphrase): “it was introduced years before the Holocaust began.” Suffice it to say this assertion is false. The yellow star was instituted in Germany, Austria, and the Protectorate only when the war began, and it was subsequently immediately applied to Jews in Poland and other occupied territories as they were shoved into ghettos, where many died and those who didn’t were by and large sent to death camps wearing those very stars of David. Molyneux might be technically correct if by “years” we mean “around 1.5 years.”

As far Loomer, who is well known as harsh critic of Islam, she used the opportunity with Molyneux to defend her wearing of the yellow star to point out that Muslims were complicit in the Holocaust. For people unlike those of us here who have actually studied the matter, this might seem like surprising news. It’s not. What is remarkable, however, is the extent to which Loomer’s presentation is an oversimplication.

Yes, SS units were formed from populations in Bosnia and Albania. They were also formed from every other country where the Nazis were the occupation force. That they were drawn from Bosnia and Albania too isn’t particularly special. What’s significant about these units is, as inaccurately limned by Loomer, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, was involved in helping to organize these units. What Loomer omits is that the Muslims from these areas had previously been forbidden by their local imams from collaborating with the local fascists; that al-Husseini got them to collaborate is more a testament to his personal influence than the fact that he was Muslim.

A few other points about these two countries during the war bears mention. First, in neither country were native Jewish population harmed by the Muslim population until the Nazis arrived. Thus, in these countries, we have examples of the kinds of violence witnessed elsewhere, particularly the Baltic States, where the entry of Nazi troops occasioned an outbreak of anti-Semitic violence. In fact, in Bosnia and Albania, the violence was not spontaneous as it was in the Baltics; rather, only once these units had been formed and set loose by the Nazi occupying forces were Jews harmed by them. To claim, therefore, that the men being Muslim was decisive in their killing of Jews is a gross misstatement.

It turns out, that in the case of Albania, the move to deploy the population to kill Jews was so unsuccessful that it was one of only three countries in Europe occupied by or allied with the Nazis that flatly refused to turn over its Jewish population for extermination. The other two are Denmark and Bulgaria – the latter of which had the fourth largest Muslim population in Europe in 1941 (after Albania, Bosnia, and Turkey).

Turkey, of course, was neutral but was and is a Muslim country. Its primary importance during the Holocaust is that it provided transit for Jews fleeing to Palestine – particularly those fleeing from Romania. It’s hard to say therefore that the role played by Turkey during the Holocaust was one that would reflect negatively on Muslims.

Finally, during the Holocaust, the leader of the second-largest Arab country, Sultan Muhammad V of Morocco, refused to allow the Jews of Morocco to be deported and only under duress relented to allowing some (but not all) proposed anti-Jewish legislation be imposed by the Vichy French.

In short, compared with other religious communities in Europe, the case of Muslims in Europe (and North Africa) during the Holocaust is a mixed bag. There were certainly villains – the Mufti principal among them. But there were also heroes and rescuers and people who refused to participate in the murder or betrayal of their Jewish neighbors. Loomer’s statements are a disservice to people who should be receiving her gratitude.

Some Initial Observations on Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen Handbook

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Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen study, which we have already addressed in its Italian version, has just been issued as Holocaust Handbook, Volume 39 in an English translation. Several members of the HC team will be posting their observations about this text on this blog shortly. My initial observations constitute seven parts, presented below.

1) Flawed Logic

Mattogno's key argument regarding German actions in the USSR is that Soviet Jews were killed because they were perceived by the Germans to be the "architects and supporters of Bolshevism" rather than because they were Jews (p.126). However, this is a "begging the question" fallacy because it does not acknowledge how this perception was connected to a racist worldview in which, as I showed here and here, the Jews were considered to be a Gegenrasse. Mattogno omits, for example, Hitler's message to the troops of October 2, 1941, in which both Communism and American plutocracy were blamed on"Jews and Jews alone." Given that the evidence clearly shows the perpetrators embracing this worldview, it is inescapable that Jews were killed "as Jews", as a perceived world-historical racial enemy. Mattogno simply feigns blindness to this racist, antisemitic framework of Nazi policy.

2) Orders

Mattogno has not corrected the weaknesses I noted in this posting. These include:

a) Not acknowledging the separation of Bolsheviks and Jews in orders issued before the invasion
b) Ignoring the targeting of Polish Jews in Heydrich's Einsatzbefehl No. 2, reproduced in Operational Situation Report No. 10.
c) Blindness to the fact that the shooting of Jews as "looters", as reported by Magill on August 12, 1941, was antisemitic
d) Exclusion of the Bila Tserkva massacre, including the killing of children, which took place under the overall command of Reichenau.

Mattogno also fails to address the antisemitic content of the Reichenau and Manstein orders, discussed here and here.

Moreover, Mattogno ignores the vast literature on the pattern of escalation in the summer of 1941, such as the work of Browning, Longerich and Matthaeus (for example, online here).

3) Lying about the Organization of Killing

Mattogno repeats his false claim about the organization of killing, stating that it was all done by "3,000 soldiers" with the "assistance" of SS and Police (p.190), ignoring the fact that the Wehrmacht,  HSPPF, Kommandostab, Order Police and native auxiliaries often provided the vast majority of manpower for killing actions, and the killing order or authorization was often given by a Wehrmacht or Higher SS and Police leader, even though he had acknowledged earlier that the Kommandostab had 25,000 men (p.39).

4) The Partisan Myth

Mattogno fails to account for the fact that mass executions were usually of unarmed civilians. For example, as noted here, "when Fegelein reported on the unit's killings in the two-week period from late July, it described the 13,788 dead Jews as "plunderers", whereas only 714 prisoners were captured" and in "the course of one month, units of Bechtolsheim's 707th Infantry Division shot 10,431 "captives" out of a total of 10,940, whilst incurring only two dead and five wounded."

5) Abuse of Sources on White Ruthenia

Generalbezirk Weißruthenien was under a civil administration headed by Wilhelm Kube and included Minsk, which received transports of Jews from the Reich that Mattogno claims were part of a resettlement policy, despite the documentation showing they were killed. Mattogno's Handbook (p.313) includes the following extract from Kube's letter to his superior, Hinrich Lohse, of July 31, 1942:
In addition to this clear attitude towards Jewry comes the difficult task of the SD in Byelorussia of over and over again taking new Jewish transports from the Reich to their destination. This constitutes an excessive material and emotional strain on the men of the SD and removes them from their tasks, which lie in the region of ​​Byelorussia itself.
The logical meaning of this paragraph, in the context of the full letter, is that using the SD to kill Reich Jews takes them away from the far more important task of killing partisans in White Ruthenia, which is being partly accomplished by exterminating the Soviet Jews there. This is also made clear in other parts of the letter. Whereas Mattogno claims that the Germans regarded Polish and Soviet Jews differently, Kube states:
The Polish Jew, exactly like the Russian Jew, is an enemy of the German nation. He represents a politically dangerous element, a danger which far exceeds his value as a skilled worker [A slightly different translation also appears in MGK, Aktion Reinhard Camps, p.663, proving Mattogno's prior knowledge of it].
This clarifies why Kube would insist on any transports arriving from Warsaw being shot. It also reveals an awareness that Polish Jews were to exterminated, as was happening to Soviet Jews.

Mattogno also omits from the Handbook text two facts which appeared in an extract from the same letter that was quoted by him elsewhere in Aktion Reinhard Camps (pp. 345-346). Firstly Kube states that the 55,000 Jews shot in the last ten weeks included 3,500 Jews unfit for work who had been deported from the Reich the previous Autumn. These were killed on July 28-29. Secondly, the 6,500 Russian Jews killed in Minsk on July 28-29 included "women and children." Both these facts refute the story Mattogno is trying to spin in his Einsatzgruppen text, whereby only Soviet Jews aiding Communism and the partisans were to be shot. Furthermore, Mattogno overlooks the prior correspondence between Kube and Lohse in which Kube had requested a humane killing of the Reich Jews (December 16, 1941) and referred to the inability to bury them yet due to frozen ground (February 6, 1942), as discussed here (in part g). 

Mattogno also ignores the elephant in the room, namely why the Germans would deport Polish and Reich Jews farther east when they were also viewed as a partisan threat in the Ostland. Farther east in July 1942 could only mean into areas that were not secure based on Kube's understanding. The military had objected to Jews being sent to White Ruthenia in the winter of 1941-42, forcing the suspension of the transports, but Mattogno asks us to believe that the Wehrmacht farther east would not have done likewise.

Mattogno's blatant dishonesty in continuing to interpret Kube's letter of July 1941 as supporting resettlement is further shown by the fact that he has not addressed the issues I raised in my previous posting about the letter back on March 24, 2014 (part g), where I noted:
The passages Mattogno does quote also cause him severe problems that he ignores. Most of the 3,500 Reich Jews killed in the Grossaktion of July 28-29 were from the 7,000 deported in the Autumn, leaving only 2,600 remaining in the ghetto. This leaves a huge hole where those deported in the second wave seem to be absent from the ghetto population. If these had been transported east, why weren't the 3,500 Reich Jews shot on July 28-29 transported east with them instead of being shot? If the second wave deportees were not transported east, where were they located, if not killed?
Mattogno's book also contains a false rendering of Gerlach's sources on Minsk. Mattogno claims (p.281) that the shooting of November 20, 1941 is only supported by witness statements. He cites Gerlach's footnote 685 from the relevant chapter. However, Gerlach's sources are in footnotes 686 and 695 and include this note from Janetzke (YVA O.18/167.1) reporting the remaining population as 15,000 to 18,000 Jews, which only makes sense if the killings of November 20 took place. It was followed by this letter and this document. The shootings in White Ruthenia were also reported by Stahlecker, but his report mistyped the figure of 18,000 as 1,800. Stahlecker noted that the shooting of the remaining Soviet Jews "must be postponed in consideration of their being used as labour." There was no mention of resettling those Jews, including the women and children.

A further dishonesty is that Mattogno assumes (pp. 207-208) that Jews from Oshmyany, Mikhailishki and Swieciany should have been included among the survivors in  Lithuania in the second Jaeger Report even though Mattogno had acknowledged in Aktion Reinhard Camps (p.686) that those districts had been in Generalbezirk Weissruthenien until April 1, 1942, therefore he must have known that those Jews were not in Jaeger's territory of operation at the time of the report.

6) Example of False Claims of No Documentation

Mattogno claims (p.272) there is no detailed documentation for all but 1,643 of the 44,125 deaths attributed to HSSPF Jeckeln for August 1941 in Operational Situation Report 94. In reality, these are documented in reports contained in YVA O.53/86 and O.53/93. Mattogno actually cites another section of the former file on page 137.

7) Example of Forgery Allegations

With regard to the Himmler order to "drive women into the swamps", as I noted here, Mattogno (pp.136-142) "commits a common self-contradiction within Holocaust denial of assuming that a document is simultaneously implausible and forged, going against the logic that a forger would actually strive as much as possible to make the document plausible. In this case, Mattogno believes Himmler would never have ordered drowning in a swamp, but he sees no contradiction in claiming that a forger would apply that order to Himmler's name. Moreover, Mattogno ignores the fact that driving Jews into "the morass" appears in Hitler's table talk of October 25."

When all these claims against better knowledge, otherwise known as lies, are added together, we must conclude that Mattogno had no intention of producing a Handbook that would impress any person who had even a rudimentary knowledge of Nazi policy in the occupied USSR and the associated primary documents. He is preaching to fellow Nazi apologists, who are willing to overlook his absence of quality control.

Germar Rudolf’s foreword to Mattogno’s Einzatzgruppen book

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The English translation of Mattogno’s Einsatzgruppen opus, which bears the title The Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories. Genesis, Missions and Actions and has already been addressed in several HC articles, has finally been published.

Towards the end of October, as mentioned in this article, Germar Rudolf wrote that "We have submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC Blog -- to the author for his review, and are awaiting his feedback". However, there seems to have been no such feedback, or then it was limited to excuses for not addressing that long list of open issues, or then Rudolf changed his mind.

Either possibility is in line with the final part of Rudolf’s foreword to Mattogno’s book, which will be addressed in this article. Said foreword is on pp. 11-22 of the book, and the part referring to the "remarks made by the HC Blog" is on pp. 21 and 22.



GR:
The original Italian edition of this book was published in 2017. That edition has attracted the attention of a group of hostile commentators who, in August 2018, started to analyze and critique it in a series of blog entries online.

So we are "hostile commentators". Given the obvious hostility of their attacks on history and the memory of murdered people, it never ceases to amaze me how sensitive "Revisionists" are when subject to criticism themselves.

GR:
At that point in time, the editing efforts of the present English translation of Mattogno’s book were well under way. Right after I was informed about these critical blog entries, I informed Carlo Mattogno about them.

So Mattogno had to be informed by Rudolf about HC articles addressing his Einsatzgruppen book in its original Italian version? That’s quite surprising considering, inter alia, Mattogno’s detailed response, as far back as 2009, to my first series of articles addressing some of Mattogno’s writing about Bełżec extermination camp, and especially the voluminous response (long PDF) by Mattogno, Graf and Kues, addressed in several subsequent HC articles, to our white paper, which is only available online.

GR:
Since it was obvious that these blog entries had just started and were to be continued, probably for many months to come, reacting to them would have meant suspending the entire project, waiting for the bloggers to finish their critique, then do more research and finally rewrite the book where necessary, first in Italian, then in English. This would have delayed the English edition for a year, if not more.

It might have been more, given the ample dissection opportunities that Mattogno’s book provides. These opportunities are also a reason why having the book in English is helpful to its critics.

GR:
Add to this the volatile nature of blog entries, which can be changed and deleted at a moment’s notice.

Not exactly a pertinent argument considering that any blog entry can be easily printed or made into a PDF file and thus given a more "fixed" nature. That besides the fact, as concerns HC blog entries, that their authors are not exactly inclined to change or delete them "at a moment’s notice", and the references to said entries in several scholarly sources, whose authors seem to be more conscious of the fact that we are living in a digital era. Nowadays, among other things, written contracts are increasingly executed by electronic signatures on PDF files, bids to public contracts can be submitted in PDF on electronic platforms, and one finds constantly updated texts of legislation on internet websites kept by judicial authorities (like the excellent database of the Lisbon District Public Attorney’s Office), which render printed legal texts increasingly obsolete in juridical practice. Internet sites and blog entries may thus be considered equivalent to printed matter as a means of conveying facts, ideas and arguments. Considering that "Revisionism" owes most of its public dissemination to the internet, it is all the more surprising to see one of its leading figures trying to play down electronic means of publication.

GR:
In other words, Carlo Mattogno was not willing to go on a wild-goose chase just to refute some bloggers. If their critique were to be published in a conventional print format where the contents are fixed, then he would consider it.

Given the abundant space that the critique of "some bloggers" has occupied in some of Mattogno’s previous writings (see above), this argument can only evoke amusement.

As to the supposed primacy of printed matter: paper is as patient as the internet. Both give the same guarantee against their contents being rubbish – i.e. none at all, except that information available on the internet is sometimes likelier to be up-to-date, besides being more exposed to immediate criticism accessible to a large public, which can work as a sort of quality control.

GR:
Otherwise, he will not give some hostile critics the power to postpone the publication of his own book ad indefinitum.

While it was hardly our intention to delay the publication of Mattogno’s book in English, it’s interesting to learn that postponing publication on account of those "hostile critics" was considered – and then dismissed in favor of publishing something that has been largely refuted on the date of its publication already.

GR:
The reader, on the other hand, is invited to take notice of the arguments of both sides in this debate. When reading about the bloggers’ contentions regarding Mattogno’s comments on the “Jäger Report,” for instance, we notice first of all that the alpha and omega of historiography – source criticism – is something the bloggers evidently don’t like at all.

Let me see if I understood this correctly: is Rudolf saying that HC bloggers shun source criticism because they are not prepared to take Mattogno’s brand of such criticism at face value but dare call it into question?

GR:
All Mattogno does in this regard in the present book is to raise some questions about this document. He does the same with the Einsatzgruppen’s infamous Incident Reports. Source-critical questions are not illegitimate, as the bloggers suggest, but pivotal.

I’ll take that as a positive answer to my previous question, plus a somewhat-less-than-honest mischaracterization of our approach. We don’t consider raising questions "illegitimate" at all, but we reserve the right (free speech works both ways) to question the substance and pertinence of raised questions. Such questioning Mattogno and Rudolf seem unable or unwilling to deal with, judging by remarks like the next one.

GR:
This alone shows the utterly unprofessional, biased approach of these bloggers.

Being called "biased" by a "Revisionist" is sort of like being called lazy by the proverbial sloth, and the "unprofessional" suggests that a) Rudolf and Mattogno do what they do for a living (hardly the most commendable job), and b) they would consider it "professional" to accept questions like theirs as solid arguments without testing them for substance.

GR:
The next thing to notice with regard to the “Jäger Report” is that the bloggers accuse Mattogno of claims or mistakes he did, in fact, not make. Just read carefully what Mattogno wrote and what the bloggers claim (provided they haven’t changed it by now), and you will realize their skewed perspective. Whether this is due to their incompetence or mendacity may be left for the reader to decide.

This self-projecting accusation reads much like Mattogno, so maybe Rudolf is just passing on something that Mattogno told him. If that should not be so, Rudolf is invited to tell what supposedly undue accusations exactly he has in mind. Maybe it is my comment about a remark that the translator rendered as follows (The Einsatzgruppen, p. 195):
There is a preliminary draft of the “Jäger Report” titled “Complete List of Executions Carried Out to Date in the Region of E.K. 3,” dated 10 September 1941, which lists executions for a total of 76,355 victims. The actual “Jäger Report” lists 62,986 victims by this same date.

Like I think any other reader would have, I interpreted the above as suggesting a major discrepancy in figures between the 1st Jäger Report dated 10.9.1941 and the 2nd Report dated 1.12.1941 (which would make the accuracy of both seem questionable). I also saw it as (again) showing that professional source critic Mattogno (to give him the benefit of doubt instead of assuming intention to mislead) is a very poor reader of the sources he criticizes. For details see my article Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 2.

As to the "provided they haven’t changed it by now"– remark: I’m not in the habit of changing anything in my articles without identifying the change and the date when it was made, and I don’t know that any of my fellow bloggers is.[Update: 10.12.2018: Someone disagrees with the assertion regarding my fellow bloggers. See BRoI's first comment to this article.][2nd. update, same day: See also the subsequent discussion.] If Rudolf thinks he has a case that I misread anything Mattogno wrote, he is invited to present it. If his argument should be pertinent, I’ll be glad to make the corresponding change and credit Rudolf with having brought the matter to my attention.

GR:
In another blog entry, they accuse Mattogno of not having used all the secondary source material available on some aspects of the present study, and to have taken into consideration only a limited number of witness testimonies. Such accusations are inevitable and unreasonable. They are inevitable, because it is physically impossible to cover all existing sources in a book of a reasonable size written by only one author within a finite time span. In addition, quoting all the secondary sources in existence – of which there are thousands – would be a book inflating exercise which would only annoy the reader without adding much information.
At the end of the day, a study such as the present one must be based primarily on primary sources, not on other scholars’ opinions.

It’s not like Mattogno ever had a problem with the length and long-windedness of his writings (apparently pointed out by none other than "Revisionist" icon Faurisson, as mentioned in this article), and I wouldn’t be surprised if many a devout "Revisionist" had his books on the shelf but never read them because they are simply too boring (sort of like I figure was the case with many a devout Nazi as concerns Mein Kampf).

As to secondary sources, I’d say that the least one can demand from who set outs to challenge the established narrative of certain events is that they be familiar with and address at least the most important scholarly works containing that narrative. Thus who writes about the Holocaust in Lithuania should at least address the publications of Arūnas Bubnys (especially his article Holocaust in Lithuanian Province in 1941) and Christoph Dieckmann’s Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941-1944, the standard work about Lithuania under German occupation. Not on account of these authors’ opinions as Rudolf would have it, but on account of evidence they present. In the context of the Jäger Report this includes, without limitation, evidence regarding the wholesale cooperation of local authorities and "partisans" at killing sites in Lithuania that the Rollkommando Hamann could count on, an important aspect that Mattogno overlooked (for details see my article Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 3). In this context it should be pointed out that there’s a slight but important difference between Mattogno’s assertions in the original Italian text (Gli Einsatzgruppen nei Territori Orientali Occupati, Part I, pp. 184-185) and the translation thereof. The Italian text reads as follows (emphasis added):
Se si suppone che il Rollkommando Hamann fosse suddiviso in unità più piccole, il che però non è attestato, si spiegherebbe senza dubbio la sua presenza lo stesso giorno a centinaia di distanza, ma non l’organizzazione caotica delle esecuzioni, effettuate a caso un po’ qua un po’ là, e non diminuirebbero certamente le distanze complessive percorse.

The translator rendered the above as follows (The Einsatzgruppen, p. 204):
If we suppose that Hamann’s raiding squad was sub-divided into smaller units, this might no doubt explain its presence in different localities hundreds of kilometers apart on the same day, but it would not explain the chaotic organization of the executions, carried out at random, here, there and everywhere, and it would certainly not reduce the total mileage by one jot.

The crucial period "il che però non è attestato" ("which however is not attested", meaning or suggesting that there’s no evidence to Hamman having divided his forces) is missing in the translation. Maybe Mattogno and/or Rudolf should have a word with the translator.

As to witnesses, I don’t remember written in my Lithuania articles that all witness testimonies regarding a given event should have been addressed by Mattogno. Rudolf is welcome to help my memory if he thinks I forgot something. Regarding the mass killings addressed in my Lithuania articles there weren’t all that many witnesses to start with.

GR:
Furthermore, when it comes to witness testimonies, these accusations are unreasonable as well, because the present book proves with ample examples that many if not most witness testimonies are filled with absurd claims that give rise to the conclusion that we simply cannot rely on them. Adding thousands more of these sometimes absurd and even grotesque statements won’t change that conclusion. Such expansion of the data pool can only confirm it. At the end of the day, it does not matter how many witnesses have claimed that witches ride on broomsticks and have sex with the devil (not necessarily both at once nor in that order).

Apparently Rudolf thinks he knows the contents of all relevant testimonies, of which he suggests there are "thousands", without having looked at them. I guess that’s part of his source criticism.

We’re not talking about witchcraft here, as Rudolf well knows. We’re talking about bullets and the blood of innocent people. Plain and earthly mass murder, which becomes apparent from a number of essentially matching sources independent of each other, including witnesses and documents (such as the administrative correspondence about public health issues generated by the mass graves that Jäger’s killers left behind, which is addressed and shown in my articles Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (1) and Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (2)). And while it’s a matter of course that eyewitness testimonies (regarding any given event) should be examined critically, especially checked against each other and other evidence where possible, it’s not like certain key witnesses ignored by Mattogno had provided preposterous accounts (such as certain claims made by survivors of the Dresden bombings on 13-15 February 1945, but I digress …).

A case in point is the bystander witness Kazimierz Sakowicz, mentioned in my article How many people were killed at Ponary? but nowhere in Mattogno’s book unless I missed something. His well-known diary entries about the Ponary killing site near Vilnius match information in the Jäger Report and other evidence that Sakowicz was not aware of, and they also allow for correcting certain estimates about the number of Jews killed at Ponary, which this witness’s observations show to be much too high.

Another case in point, particularly revealing of Mattogno’s methodology, is Otto Schroff, a Wehrmacht serviceman who along with two other members of his unit witnessed the killing of around 400 Jews at Ponary and took several photographs that show the victims being taken to the place where they were killed. Mattogno, well aware of Schroff’s photographs and the three testimonies, addresses only one of these (that of Pflüger), argues against its plausibility (rather feebly, as demonstrated in this article), and speculates that Pflüger must have been shown the aforementioned photographs and, not knowing what else to say, improvised an improbable story. Not a word about the photographs having been taken by Pflüger’s comrade Schroff, let alone about Schroff’s having expressly stated this in his testimony, which essentially and independently corroborates Pflüger’s and is wholly omitted by Mattogno.

So Mattogno suppressed Schroff’s testimony in order to present Schroff’s photographs as of unknown provenance, and to discredit Pflüger. This example of source criticism deluxe, à la Mattogno, can now be read in English on pp. 646-647 of the translation.

GR:
If it can be shown that many of these statements are untrustworthy, we need to seek better, more reliable types of evidence.

That’s a big if, notwithstanding Mattogno’s "source criticism" exercises and Rudolf exultation thereof. Especially where the testimonies are in line with documentary evidence that the witnesses could not have known.

GR:
In our case, as already stated, the type of evidence needed consists of thorough and independent forensic examinations of the mass graves that can be located. Nothing else will do.

First of all, it is worth noting that shunning all but one source of evidence ("Nothing else will do") seems to be part of Rudolf’s source criticism practices.

Second, while any additional evidence would of course be desirable, establishing the essential facts does not depend, for the reasons I mentioned at the end of this article, on how many mass graves of people murdered by Jäger’s men and their willing Lithuanian auxiliaries have been or will be dug up.

Last but not least, it should be noted that who calls for such digging previously wrote about "widespread massacres by the Soviets against the former nobility, the Christian clergy, the “bourgeoisie,” the “kulaks” (small independent farmers) and, in fact, anyone standing in their way", and "the slaughter of millions, most of them Christians by faith" by the Soviets (The Einsatzgruppen …, p. 14).

What is more, in quantitatively comparing Nazi mobile killing operations in the Soviet Union (the range of estimates mentioned by Rudolf is between 1 and 3 million victims, the difference being obviously related, among other aspects, to whether one considers the Soviet Union in its 1939 or in its 1941 borders) with Soviet mass killings, Rudolf writes the following (p. 20):
But if we compare these figures with the death toll of Soviet atrocities committed since 1917 until the outbreak of the German-Soviet war, we are dealing with “peanuts.” Estimates of that Soviet death toll up to 1941 range in the tens of millions, hence a factor ten higher than that of Jews (and non-Jews) presumably killed by Germans in the Soviet Union.

"Tens of millions" is much exaggerated, but that’s another issue. The question here is why Rudolf doesn’t call for finding and digging up the mass graves of all those "tens of millions" of Soviet atrocity victims, proclaiming that "nothing else will do". Could it be that his brand of source criticism involves double standards of evidence?

GR:
If such evidence is never developed or presented, the world will have to live for all eternity with critical, skeptical and even denying voices regarding the claimed Einsatzgruppen massacres.

Rudolf should have left out the "critical, skeptical" part (plus the "claimed") to avoid (further) self-parody.

As to the world, I'd say there is one part of it that doesn't mind "Revisionist" activities at all, but rather welcomes them: the organizations that Norman Finkelstein called the "Holocaust Industry", which are largely dependent on the "Revisionist" bogeyman to justify their continued existence.

We at HC also don’t mind "Revisionist" publications, insofar as they provide occasions for us to further explore and convey the facts of events that are of some interest to who cares about history.

Rudolf is welcome to come over here and discuss the above issues with me. According to our comments policy he may post here without moderator approval within the next 90 days. I’m also available to meet him on a web forum of his choice, no moderator interference provided. If he should accept my invitation, we can also talk about my Challenge to Supporters of the Revisionist Transit Camp Theory, where he is suggested as one of the potential arbiters.

A new document mentioning "special cellars" (Sonderkeller) in the crematoria 2 and 3 at Birkenau.

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Dr. Pavel Polian has kindly provided us with several documents from a collection residing in the Military-Medical Museum (Voyenno-Meditsinskiy Muzej) in Saint-Petersburg, Russia.
One of the documents is important for confirming the chronology of the decision to install gas chambers in the cellars of the Birkenau crematoria II and III.

We will provide a short historical introduction as well as an analysis of the Holocaust deniers' take on the issue

1. Introduction to the "special cellar" issue.

We know that the first two Birkenau crematoria (II and III) were initially planned as "normal" hygienic installations. Their morgues were began to be intended as gas chambers some time in 1942* and as undressing rooms some time in 1943.

In 1994 Jean-Claude Pressac and Robert Jan van Pelt posited that the idea to turn the cellars of the Birkenau crematoria 2 and 3 into gas chambers began to be considered only at the end of October of 1942 (J.-C. Pressac with J. van Pelt, "The machinery of mass murder in Auschwitz", in I. Gutman, M. Berenbaum (eds.), Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, 1994, p. 223):
At the end of October 1942, the Zentralbauleitung began to consider transfer of the gassing from bunkers 1 and 2 to a room in crematorium.
[...]
It was decided to transform morgue 1 of crematorium II into a gas chamber. One indication that such a decision was taken is a "leak" - that is, any mention in a document (writing, blueprint, photograph) of an abnormal use of the crematoria that could not be explained except by the massive gassing of human beings - that occurred on November 27, when one of Bischoff's assistants, Wolter, called Topf to ask for a master metalworker to install the ventilation systems in the morgues of crematorium II. His colleague Janisch, who was formally in charge of the site, canceled the request. Wolter drew up a note to inform Bischoff what had happened. In this note he designated the corpse cellar in crematorium II as "special cellar" (Sonderkeller). That was not the only slip. Every document in a 120-item inventory of material needed for the completion of Birkenau, undertaken between December 10 and 18, was captioned "Re: Kriegsgefangenenlager Auschwitz (Durchführung der Sonderbehandlung)," or "Concerning: Prisoner-of-War Camp Auschwitz (Carrying Out of Special Treatment)," which referred to the killing operations.
Later Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt moved the "conversion" date to September (see Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present, 1996, p. 324).

That the designation "special cellar" was indeed a code word for a gas chamber was confirmed by the engineer Kurt Prüfer (designer of the Auschwitz ovens who worked for the firm Topf & Söhne that also took part in planning the ventilation systems in the gas chambers) during his interrogation by SMERSH on 13.03.1948 (copy in USHMM RG-06.025*08):
On the drawings of the crematoria and in the official correspondence between the SS construction office of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the firm Topf & Söhne the gas chambers bore the code designations "mortuaries", "special cellars", "baths for special purpose" etc.
This is the document mentioned by Pressac and van Pelt:

RGVA f. 502, op. 1, d. 313, l. 65.
In fact, however, that was not the first such "slip".

First of all, unbeknownst to Pressac and van Pelt, there is an even earlier RGVA document mentioning a "special cellar" in a crematorium - the 04.11.1942 construction report**.

RGVA f. 502, op. 1, d. 24, l. 86.
But, as it turns out, there is an even earlier document using this code word.

2. The new "special cellar" document and its meaning for the chronology of the gas chambers.

On 15.09.1942 a talk occurred between the armaments minister Albert Speer and the WVHA chief Oswald Pohl during which Speer approved the funding of the expansion of Birkenau on the order of 13,7 million RM (see Pohl to Himmler, 16.09.1942 in Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 16: Das KZ Auschwitz 1942–1945 und die Zeit der Todesmärsche 1944/45, 2018, pp. 168-9).

A letter from Hans Kammler to the Plenipotentiary for the regulation of the construction industry from 15.09.1942 reports on the Speer-Pohl meeting and states that two documents are being attached:
1.) List of the necessary additional structures with corresponding construction volumes.
2.) List of necessary construction materials and barracks.
The letter itself is in GARF (the State Archive of the Russian Federation)

GARF f. 7021, op. 108, d. 32, l. 43.
The mentioned attachments however are not in the same file. It is these two lists (that reside in the VMM under the archival signature 0025407-OF, pp. 27-30; source: Dr. Polian) that we now have and are publishing for the first time.



The first list (necessary additional structures with corresponding construction volumes) is given for the context and can be compared to a later similar list from 28.10.1942 (published by F. Freund, B. Perz, K. Stuhlpfarrer, "Der Bau des Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz-Birkenau", Zeitgeschichte, iss. 5/6, p. 202). The sum of 13,76 million RM presented to Speer was the same but the cost of specific items is different. Interestingly, only 3 crematoria are mentioned.

The second document (list of necessary construction materials and barracks) is the key one. It begins thus:
For the carrying out of special treatment the following additional barracks are necessary.
The list of all the camp barracks follows.

Here a word of caution is necessary, so we will make a small detour. In the official RSHA jargon the word Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) meant exclusively executions (mostly extrajudicial ones), whether by gas, bullets, gallows or other means. However when the term seeped into the other agencies, like WVHA, it sometimes became "generalized". In this particular document it is clearly synonymous with the "Final Solution to the Jewish question", which at that point meant the eventual but not immediate extermination of all European Jews - the element of the Jewish slave labor (and thus temporary survival of a large portion of Jews fit for work - with most Jews permanently unfit for work immediately disposed of) was a very important part of this plan.

Hence this list includes all possible camp barracks, including the hospital barracks and the troops' barracks. Clearly, therefore, in this document the term was not meant to apply to immediate executions but rather to the whole long genocide process, similar to what was described in the Wannsee protocol.

Similar situation obtains for another related document - the cost estimate from 29.10.1942 (in Freund et al., op. cit., p. 207) which mentions two disinfestation installations - one for special treatment (Entwesungsanlage für Sonderbehandlung), the other for the troops. Since, as we know, the first disinfestation installation - later named the Central Sauna - was not intended to be used directly for mass executions (the separately listed crematoria were), clearly the "special treatment" here is meant in the same general sense, including the utilization of the Jewish slave labor and property in the camp. Thus whether the mention of "special treatment" in the series of documents  mentioned by Pressac and van Pelt constituted a massive "slip" is a matter of interpretation - and it is also not clear that both full meanings of the term (the more specific one and the more general one) would have always been readily understood by the people outside of the RSHA and WVHA, like Speer. (Previously we discussed the issue of terminology here and here.)

After the barracks list we see a list of what are called "massive provisional constructions". Among them we see:
- "crematorium I with a special cellar [Sonderkeller]";
- "crematorium II with a special cellar";
- "2 8-muffle incineration ovens".
Interestingly, the crematoria III and IV (IV and V according to the alternative numeration) do not appear explicitly, rather their ovens are summarized in one line. It may be that for whatever reason they were presented here  as one cremation complex (hence there were "3 crematoria" in the previous list). Indeed, the decision to move the 2 8-muffle ovens from Mogilev to Auschwitz had only been taken in the middle of August, and although there are documents confirming the August plans for crematoria IV and V, there might still have been uncertainties at this early stage.

Thus we see that in this document both crematoria I and II (II and III according to the alternative numeration) had one "special cellar" each. I.e. the gas chambers were being planned as early as September 14, 1942, thus moving back the date of the origin of these gas chambers as proposed by Pressac and van Pelt and confirming the dating adopted by Dwork and van Pelt.

3. "Special cellars" and Holocaust denial.

Let us now look at how the Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno (the only denier to address the previously known Sonderkeller document at some length) interpreted the code word.

In Auschwitz: The End of a Legend (printed, among other places, in G. Rudolf (ed.), Auschwitz Plain Facts. A Response to Jean-Claude Pressac, 2016) he merely notes (ibid., p. 176):
The term “special basement” (Sonderkeller) applied to Morgue 1 (p. 60) matches other similar terms beginning with “special,” which are all linked to the fight against typhus.
In several other works Mattogno devotes whole small sections to the code word. Since he simply copy-pastes this section from book to book, we will work with the one printed in The Real Case for Auschwitz (2015), pp. 80ff.

First of all, Mattogno argues (by citing relevant documents) that albeit the heading of the 28.11.1942 document refers to "crematoria", the content can only refer to one crematorium - II - since only its cellar was at the construction stage advanced enough so that its ceiling would be ready in about a week's time. This is initially plausible.

From this he concludes that the plural "Sonderkeller" in the document must refer to the two mortuary cellars of crematorium II, thus negating the use of the word as a criminal trace:
On the other hand, the basements of Crematorium II for which a “de-aeration system” had been planned were two in number, “Leichenkeller 1” and “Leichenkeller 2.” The former also had a “Belüftungsanlage” (aeration system), the latter only an “Entlüftungsanlage” (deaeration system), which was installed between March 15 and 21, 1943. It is thus clear that the “Sonderkeller(s)” in Wolter’s memo were both “Leichenkeller(s)” of Crematorium II. These half-basement rooms were “Sonder-” precisely because, out of the six rooms which made up the half-basement, they were the only two morgues which had an artificial ventilation. 
However, this does not follow. We have to take the following into consideration: it was a notice about a phone call. This notice was not typed by Wolter himself but rather by someone named L. (this initial appears in the code), probably a secretary. We don't know who L. was, but we know that exactly the section of this document dealing with the special cellar contains a crude grammar mistake (accusative "über die Sonderkeller" instead of the dative "über den Sonderkellern"). (Was L. a native speaker at all?)

We have the following transmission chain: Prüfer and Wolter speak on the phone and then Wolter dictates the notice to L.

Did Wolter misunderstand some of the things Prüfer said? Did Prüfer use the term Sonderkeller properly (only to refer to morgue 1) but Wolter, perhaps not fully familiar with the jargon, indeed used it to refer to both cellars? Was Wolter erroneously thinking, despite Krema III not being ready, of both crematoria as indicated by the heading of the notice? Or did perhaps L. not fully understand what Wolters was telling him or her in regard to the cellar(s) (e.g. due to plural "crematoria" being mentioned in the heading)?

There are too many unknowns to accept Mattogno's interpretation.

Moreover, Mattogno's explanation doesn't make any sense: of course the underground morgues had to be mechanically ventilated. This did not make them in any way special. The ventilation was expected. Mattogno thus cannot plausibly account for the use of "Sonder-".

In any case, whatever interpretational ambiguity introduced by Mattogno's argument is destroyed by the document we have now published: crematoria II and III indeed had only one special cellar each.

That there was only one such cellar in crematorium II was already clear from the 04.11.1942 report Mattogno himself published (see our introduction above), so he tries to explain it away:
It is possible to argue that the “special cellar” was “Leichenkeller 1,” but was its “special” use a criminal one? [...] if the “special cellar” of Crematorium II had been destined to become a homicidal gas chamber modeled upon the alleged one of Crematorium I, ZBL would have planned to fit the openings for the introduction of Zyklon B in the ferroconcrete ceiling of “Leichenkeller 1” already at the stage when the ceiling was laid. However, the ceiling was realized without such openings. [126] Hence, ZBL, having decided to transform “Leichenkeller 1” into a homicidal gas chamber at a time when only the water-proof floor had been poured in this room, had covered it with a ceiling devoid of openings – essential elements for a homicidal gas chamber using Zyklon B – only to allegedly open up later, with hammer and chisel, four openings for Zyklon B in this concrete slab 18 cm thick! Unfortunately for Pressac, the ZBL engineers were not that stupid. [...] Hence, the term “Sonderkeller” (special cellar) can easily be explained by the fact that “Leichenkeller 1,” being equipped, as it was, with an aeration/de-aeration system, was probably planned – as Pressac himself hypothesizes – “to take corpses several days old, beginning to decompose,” and therefore the room had to be well ventilated".
[126] This can be seen on a photo of the “Kamann” series taken in January 1943 which shows the outside of “Leichenkeller 1” of Crematorium II. APMO, negative no. 20995/506. Cf. Pressac 1989, p. 335.
Mattogno relies on a photo from the Kamann series showing the snow-covered roof of the future gas chamber/morgue 1. He claims without any argument that it shows that the ceiling of the gas chamber was realized without the Zyklon-B introduction openings. 


It is not clear how he arrives at this conclusion. Only the absence of the introduction chimneys is clear from the photo, the photo tells us nothing about the openings (the angle does not allow for any conclusions about the presence or absence of any openings, and even a photo taken at another angle would not necessarily be conclusive one way or another, since the holes could have been covered by some material to reduce the snow accumulation inside the cellar).

We do know that the introduction holes were made during the construction of the ceiling (see D. Keren, J. McCarthy, H. Mazal, "The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2004, vol. 18, issue 1, p. 75).
The roof's lower portion was a thick layer of concrete, over which was laid waterproofing tar paper, and which was finally topped with a thin upper layer of sand-concrete. For the middle layer, brushing tar over the tar paper was necessary to ensure waterproofing. Of the original concrete edge of the hole only a few centimeters of the intact lower layer remain, in one corner, but a careful examination of that location reveals two clear drip marks where tar was brushed over the edge (Figure 11b, right). This demonstrates that the hole in the concrete was already there during the waterproofing step, while the roof was still being constructed.

As a side note, Mattogno ignored this evidence in his attempted response to Keren et al.

Mattogno thus constructed a silly strawman argument and his argument crumbles with it.

And note how Mattogno's explanations opportunistically change from document to document. In one case he thinks all ventilated cellars could be named "special cellars", in the other case he wants only one type of a ventilated cellar (with exhaust and supply ventilation) to be designated as such. One wonders how, with such a plethora of alleged meanings, the Central Construction Office would have been able to recognize what cellar was being referred to.

Mattogno's attempt to claim that Sonderkeller was merely a reference to a cellar with supply and exhaust ventilation for heavily decomposed corpses is also not plausible: not only there had been a ready designation for this cellar (B-Keller) and thus no need for terms emphasizing the supposed "specialness", the emphasis on the "special cellars" in the otherwise brief newly published document*** is most plausibly explained by their new function as gas chambers (which is also confirmed by later documents).



Endnotes:

* We will not seriously consider Michael Thad Allen's unconvincing thesis that the morgues of the crematoria II and III were planned as gas chambers from the very beginning (M. Allen, "The Devil in the Details: The Gas Chambers of Birkenau, October 1941", Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2002, vol. 16, issue 2, pp, 189–216). It can't plausibly explain why the exhaust vents in the chambers were placed below if the gas chambers were planned in the morgues from the start - this is counterproductive to gassings (corpses in the chamber are likely to obstruct the vents; HCN is lighter than air and with mass gassings most of it would have been concentrated in the upper half of the chamber anyway - so the actual suboptimal arrangement of the vents - the supply air above, the exhaust air below, can only be plausibly explained by a last-minute change of plans from a normal morgue to a gas chamber with a minimal re-planning effort). Allen's attempt to argue by analogy with the Alt-Drewitz delousing installation (a poor argument on its own, since the "logic" of a delousing gas chamber is not automatically transferable to a homicidal gas chamber due to presence of the victims) fails due to a confusion of this hot-air delousing chamber with a Zyklon B one, which it was not; placement of the ducts in the walls doesn't establish any sort of a criminal trace, since the ducts could have been placed at any height in a homicidal gas chamber, far away from the reach of the victims, so the wall placement was not a necessity; it was however a natural solution for a semi-basement morgue (where cold foul air optimally has to be exhausted from below and the ducts obviously would not have been placed on the floor inside the morgue since they would have taken away valuable storage area and would have been easily damageable); Allen's thesis does not account for the progressive changes in the "homicidal" direction pointed out by Pressac and van Pelt; Allen appeals to some defensive testimonies of the perpetrators during trials but ignores the testimony of Rudolf Höß, who claimed that the crematoria plans were changed to include the gas chambers (protocol of interrogation from 01.04.1946, p. 27); the thesis is not supported by any documents and while one might find an ad hoc explanation for why the Nazis would have needed a huge gas chamber in Auschwitz in October 1941 (e.g. for POWs), the existence of this gas chamber isn't organically necessitated by any events or policies at the time.

** To our knowledge it was first cited by the Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno.

*** Note that e.g. a storehouse with a "cellar" is also mentioned later in the list; had only the presence of a cellar played a role in the document, same would have been true for the crematoria; but it is only the special cellars are emphasized for the crematoria, and not the cellar areas as a whole.

Mattogno's Distortions on the Crimea

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Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen Handbook (here) has a section on the Crimea (pp.673-681) that illustrates Mattogno's ignorance of context and documentation. Mattogno assumes that all killings would be documented in detail by the Operational Situation Reports and is apparently unaware that the Wehrmacht issued its own killing reports due to the fact that the fourteen command HQ[1]subordinated to Korueck 553 (11th Army Rear Army Command) did not just hand over Jews to the SD but also killed them using their own military police. He also, as in the rest of the book, ignores the true ideological context, in which Jews were killed as Jews, as shown by the fact that the killings included Krymchaks, despite the fact that they were "passive towards Bolshevism", as I discussed here. Mattogno's poor sourcing is shown by the fact that he totally overlooks the documentation from the Manstein trial, which is online at Yad Vashem. The analysis below demonstrates how much this weakens Mattogno's authority on the region.

The killings in Crimea were given Wehrmacht blessing by Manstein's order of November 20, 1941, which stated that: 
Jewry constitutes the middle man between the enemy in the rear and the still fighting remainder of the Red Armed Forces and the Red leadership. More strongly than in Europe, it holds all the key positions in the political leadership and administration, controls trades and guilds and further forms the nucleus for all unrest and possible uprisings.

The Jewish-Bolshevist system must be exterminated once and for all. Never again must it encroach upon our European living space.

The German soldier has therefore not only the task of crushing the military potential of this system. He comes also as the bearer of a racial concept and as the avenger of all the cruelties which have been perpetrated on him and on the German people.

The fight behind the lines is not yet being taken seriously enough. Active cooperation of all soldiers must be demanded in the disarming of the population, the control and arrest of all roving soldiers and civilians and the removal of Bolshevist symbols.

Every instance of sabotage must be punished immediately with the severest measures and all signs thereof must be reported.

The food situation at home makes it essential that the troops should as far as possible be fed o the land and that furthermore the largest possible stocks be placed at the disposal of the homeland. Particularly in enemy cities a large part of the population will have to go hungry. Nevertheless nothing which the homeland has sacrificed itself to contribute may, out of a misguided sense of humanity, be given to Prisoners or to the population-so long as they are not in the service of the German Wehrmacht.

The soldier must appreciate the necessity for harsh punishment of Jewry, the spiritual bearer of the Bolshevist terror. This is also necessary in order to nip in the bud all uprisings which are mostly attributable to Jews.[2]
The first paragraph makes antisemitic assumptions about Jewish control of the state and economy that come from Nazi racial ideology. The term "bearer of a racial concept" in the third paragraph could not be clearer that this was a war of extermination on racial grounds. The clause "in enemy cities a large part of the population will have to go hungry" shows awareness of the Hungerplan that was intended to starve 30 million people across the USSR. The phrase "the necessity for harsh punishment of Jewry" can only make sense if the punishment was to be collective death, and this was to be inflicted on "Jewry" not merely "Judeo-Bolsheviks" or partisans. 

Collaboration between the military and SD commenced immediately in the Crimea, a trend continued from the 11th Army's campaign farther west. On November 11, 1941, Korueck 553 Quartiermeister Friedrich Benecke informed FK 810 Pallmann that the Feldgendarmerie (FG, Military Police) were to shoot persons themselves after screening by the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP, the Secret Field Police) and only hand over Jews to the SD in doubtful cases.[3] These killings are simply ignored or unknown by Mattogno because he falsely assumes that Einsatzgruppe D carried out all executions. Three days later, OK I/853 was able to report that 11,000 Jews "are being executed by the SD" in Simferopol, although the bulk of these killings had not yet taken place.[4]Most of these Jews died between December 9-13, 1941, as per the account given by Angrick which was posted to the HC blog in 2006 by Roberto Muehlenkamp.[5]According to Operational Situation Report 150, most of Crimea's large urban districts were "free of Jews" by the beginning of 1942:

Simferopol, Yevpatoria, Alushta, Krasubasar, Kerch, and Feodosia and other districts of western Crimea are free of Jews. From November 16 to December 15, 1941, 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Krimchaks, 824 Gypsies, and 212 Communists and partisans have been shot. Altogether, 75,881 persons have been executed.
Rumors about executions in other areas complicated the action in Simferopol. Reports about actions against Jews gradually filter down from fleeing Jews, Russians, and also from the loose talk of German soldiers.[6]
The crucial role of the military in the Simferopol extermination was explained in the Manstein trial by the commander of SK 11b, Braune. The 11th Army had demanded that the area be cleared of Jews by Christmas 1941, but Braune had not been able to redeploy in Crimea all the transport and men he had recently used in Odessa. The 11th Army had provided the necessary trucks and personnel to rectify this shortage. Braune also stated that "resettled" was a euphemism for execution.[7]The Manstein prosecution then gave a detailed account of a report for November 26-27 showing the participation of Feldgendarmerie under the command of Major Erxleben.[8] Mattogno again is ignorant of this context because he continues to rely on Paget's false assumption that all the killings in Simferopol were done in one day (November 16, 1941).

The reliance of Einsatzgruppe D on the military to cordon off the shooting areas and sometimes supply logistical assistance at other sites is shown in several sources. Operational Situation Report 193 gives a very detailed account of four raids in Feodosia, each of which was assisted by at least 350 soldiers.[9] Two earlier reports stated that 2320 soldiers, 55 Military Police and 20 Secret Field Police had been made available to the SD for an action against "unreliable elements", including "Jews".[10] Feldgendarmen assisted on 18.1.42 at Pervomaiskoye[11], an action that involved a gas van,[12] and on 25.1.42 at Sarabus-Spath.[13] Feldgendarmerie also carried out shootings, on the initiative of their HQ, in rural areas in regional hunts, such as the killing of three men and two women in the Fraydorf agricultural area.[14]

In Kertsch, the military actively requested killings. On November 27, OK I (V)/287 noted that the 11th army had requested that "the liquidation of the Jews will have to be expedited due to the jeopardized food position."[15]In the same person's subsequent report of 7.12.41, in which 2,500 Jews had been killed between December 1-3, the word 'execution' was crossed out and 'resettled' inserted.[16]A similar substitution was also made to reports by the OK in Bakhchisary[17]and Yewpatoria.[18] Mattogno is unable to offer a plausible explanation for these alterations to documents.

On days 9-14 of the Manstein trial, numerous Nuremberg documents were submitted as exhibits that established the extent of the killing of Jews, Gypsies and "insane" persons carried out in Crimea between December 1941 and July 1942. On 14.12.41, Ortskommandantur Karasubasar Stab Wachbatl. (B) 49 reported that 76 Jewish men, women (referred to as "Weiber") and children had been taken to a field four days previously and not seen again.[19] A population count in that same location, reported on 14.2.42, found only one Jew and one Krymchak remaining in the town from a population of 8,789.[20]On 1.1.42, OK II/939 reported 443 Jews killed in Dshankoj.[21]On 15.2.42, FK 810 reported the killing in Ikor of a woman, a three-year-old child and a new-born child.[22]On 18.2.42, Operational Situation Report 170 noted that "From 9th January to 15th February, more than 300 Jews were apprehended in Simferopol and executed. By this, the number of people executed in Simferopol increased to almost 10,000 Jews, about 300 more than the number of Jews registered."[23]


Killings continued through March. Operational Situation Report 184 detailed the killing of 2,100 persons, of which 678 were Jews and 810 'asocials,' primary mentally ill and Gypsies.[24]On 13.3.42, FK 810 reported that the command HQ had handed over to the SD 98 Jews from Schaumian and 6 Jews from Kurulu-Keneges.[25] On 16.4.42, Ohlendorf's deputy Seibert informed army intelligence that:
(1). The Crimea is freed of Jews. Only occasionally some small groups turn up, especially in the northern areas. In cases where single Jews have been able to camouflage themselves by means of forged papers, etc., they will, nevertheless, be recognized sooner or later, as experience has taught. The population, which in the majority has welcomed the measures taken against the Jews, is assisting in this task by making denunciations. This is only natural considering the fact that the Crimea has been a special domain of Jewry. About the development and the influence of Jewry in the Crimea a detailed report is attached."[26] 
Mattogno ignores this report by Seibert, despite its prominence in the NMT judgment against him.

On 30.6.42 Ortskommandantur I/287 Kertsch stated that the city was free of Jews.[27] Sixteen days later, the OK Bakhchisarai informed Korück 553 that 1029 Jews from camp Tole had been "drowned [versenkt]" at Bakhchisarai.[28] On 10.6.42, the mother of Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, a member of FGA 683, wrote to her other son:
But thank God he has not been ordered to participate in the ‘cleansing action’ in Kerch (nicht mit in Kertsch zur ‘Säuberungsaktion’eingesetzt). It was already terrible enough in Simferopol.[29]
The placing of ‘Säuberungsaktion’ in quotes suggests she knew of its sinister meaning. Eggebrecht is another source ignored or unknown by Mattogno because he is a dilettante in this field. He lacks a sincere desire to pursue true knowledge and construct a proper understanding of the material because his purpose is to negate historical facts and sources.

[1] Eleven Ortskommandanturen (OK) and three Feldkommandanturen (FK); cf. Kiril Feferman, The Holocaust in the Crimea and the North Caucasus (Jerusalem, 2016), p.114. 
[2]4064-PS, YVA P.13/136, pp.52-55, here p.53; IMT XXXIV, pp.129-132, here p.130; translation in the the trial of German Army Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, British Military Court, Hamburg [hereafter Manstein], 27.8.49, YVA TR.4/5, pp.3-5, here p.4; cf. Feferman, pp.112-114.
[3] Nuremberg document L-007, English translation in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, p.66.
[4] Ortskommandatur I/853 (Hpt. Kleiner) to Korueck 553, 14.11.41, NOKW-1573, BArch B 162/657, pp.131-133, here p.132. Translation in NMT, X, pp.1258-1259 and in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, p.46.
[5]http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/10/thats-why-it-is-denial-not-revisionism.html.
[6]EM 150, 2.1.42, NOKW-1727, p.20, BArch B 162/442, p.221.
[7]Manstein, 7.9.49, TR.4/12, pp.64-69. On the role of Feldgendarmerie in Simferopol, see Feferman, pp.133-139, especially p.136.
[8] MAR-1324, Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, pp.47-48.
[9]EM 193, 17.4.42, NO-3281, pp.12-18, T2724271-T2724277; English translation in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, pp.40-44.
[10] AOK 11 War Diary (signed Major Helmut Oppermann), 31.1.42, NOKW-1741 and Braune report, 12.1.42, NOKW-1863, both cited in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, pp.38-39.
[11] 3./Feldgend., Abt., (mot) 683, 2.2.42, NOKW-1283, BArch B/162/1182, p.17, scan of YVA M.29.FR/118 online at Untold Stories.
[12]Testimony of Stepan Beznos, 27.5.44, scan of GARF 7021-9-194, p.89, online at Untold Stories.
[13] 3./Feldgend., Abt., (mot) 683, 2.2.42, NOKW-1283, 2.2.42; English translation in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, pp.68-70.
[14] 3./Feldgend., Abt., (mot) 683, 11.2.42, NOKW-1656, BArch B 162/276, p.137, translation in Feferman, p.118.
[15] NOKW-1651, 27.11.41, BArch B 162/657, p.141, translation in Manstein, 5.9.49, TR.4/10, pp.58-59, and 8.9.49, TR.4/13, p.50.
[16] NOKW-1628, 7.12.41, BArch B 162/657, p.153, translation in Manstein, 7.10.49, TR.4/24, p.25; forensic analysis of this document by Rudolf Mally, who established that "Exekutierung" had been crossed out and "Umsiedlung" substituted. See TR.4/14, pp.17-20, and VEJ 7, Dok. 126, pp.389-391, especially note 5.
[17] Ortskommandantur Bachtschissaray, 14.12.41, BArch B 162/657, p.166; another copy, YVA M.29.FR/41 online at Untold Stories; testimony of Paul Zapp, Munich, 8.1.68 at same link.
[18] OK I (V)/277 to Korueck 553, NOKW 1727, 21.12.41, BArch B 162/657, p.166; English translation at NMT, XI, p.311 and MansteinTR.4/14, p.20. 
[19]BArch B 162/657, p.163.
[20] OK II/937 to Korueck 553, 14.2.42, NOKW-1688, BArch B 162/657, p.76; partial English translation in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, p.71.
[21] Scan of YVA M.29.FR/40 online at Untold Stories, English translation in Manstein transcript, 6.9.49, p.723, TR.4/11, p.13.
[22] NOKW-2256, 15.2.42, BArch B 162/657, p.81; translation in Manstein, 9.9.42, TR.4/14, pp.29-30.
[23]EM 170, NO-3339, p.19, BArch B 162/444, p.384; English translation in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, p.54.
[24]EM 184, 23.3.42, p.10, T2724048.
[25] FK 810 TB 27.2-13.3.42, 13.3.42, NOKW-1689, BArch B 162/657, pp.103-107, here p.107; English translation in Manstein, 8.9.49, TR.4/13, pp.72-73; FK (V) Yevpatoria, 16.3.42, p.2, NOKW-1851, scan from YVA M.29.FR/40 onlineat Untold Stories.
[26]NMT, X, p.143; Manstein, 6.9.49, TR.4/11,p.730.
[27] NOKW-1819, 30.6.42, English translation in Manstein, 9.9.49, TR.4/14, pp.21-22.
[28]II/576 (V) Bakhchisarai to Korueck 553, 16.7.42, YVA M.29.FR/1152, scan online at Untold Stories; English translation in Manstein, TR.4/59, p.21
[29] Claudia Maurer Zenck, 'Eggebrechts Militärzeit auf der Krim, Online-Publikation Hamburg, (March) 2010, online, pp.20-21; English translation in Boris von Haken, 'How Do We Know What We Know about Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht?', German Studies Review, 35/2, 2012, p.307.

What's There to Hide? Camouflage and Secrecy of Nazi Extermination Sites

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Contemporary German documents referring to the fate of Jews considered unfit for forced labour often do so in a conspicuously vague way. Instead of spelling out actual destinations or camps, general phrases like "eastwards" and "Russian East" were employed.

Elsewhere I've pointed out how the killing of Poles and mentally ill people in 1940 in East-Prussia was disguised by the Nazis. For "camouflaging" the "liquidation" of members of the Polish intelligentsia in the camp of Soldau, "the Poles in question had to sign a declaration of the content that they agreed with their deportation to the Generalgouvernement". The "mentally ill prisoners...liquidated by a special commando" were "evacuated" and "placed somewhere else" in SS correspondence.

The concept to camouflage murder with none or vague destinations was later also implemented for disguising the extermination of the Jews. The deception could work as it had a true core. The Jews had to gather in the towns and villages and were brought away. For the population and authorities parts of the operation could have appeared more or less like a real resettlement. Except that they never heard anything of those "resettled" again, as the "resettlers" were executed, buried and incinerated at the next extermination site.

On the Babi Yar massacre, Einsatzgruppe C reported that "the 'resettlement measure' against the Jews was approved throughout by the population. The fact that in reality the Jews were liquidated was hardly known until now" and that "more than 30,000 Jews showed up, who still believed into their resettlement until shortly before the execution thanks to an extremely clever organization" (see Evidence on the Babi Yar Massacre 29 & 30 September 1941: Contemporary Sources).

The code language not only served to mask the actions in correspondence towards those outside the inner circle, it also worked to relieve the strain by wrapping cold blooded murder with more innocent sounding terms. It was employed also in cases where its euphemistic nature is clear from the context. A commando order of 5 February 1943 by Eduard Strauch described a "resettlement site" as "two pits", with squads of ten men assigned to each pit and two men "handing out the cartridges" (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 8 Sowjetunion mit annektierten Gebieten II, p. 581).

The default euphemism to circumscribe government-ordered murder, i.e. executions without juridical decision, used to be the term Sonderbehandlung/special treatment (see also Mattogno's special treatment of evidence). The meaning of the term was widely known and rather easy to see through though, compared to "evacuation", "resettlement", "transportation to the East" etc.. It did not serve to limit the truth only to the most inner circle.

When the SS statistician Richard Korherr compiled a report on the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question", he employed the term "special treatement" to describe the fate of the Jews deported to Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and Kulmhof. He was promptly corrected by Himmler's staff that "he wishes that in no place a 'special treatment of the Jews' is referred to" and ordered to use the more inconspicuously phrases "transportation to the Russian East" and "sifted through the camps" (see also Richard "I didn’t know" Korherr). Towards the head of the Security Police and Service Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Himmler considered the report, which masked the systematic extermination of more than 2 Millions Jews as mere transportation to the East, as "quite good as potential material...for camouflage purposes" in the future (Doc. 1).

In his famous Posen speech of 4 October 1943, Himmler disclosed the "Jewish evacuation" towards his SS leaders as the "extermination of the Jewish people". It is borne out by the references to the Röhm Purge killings and 1000 corpses "lying together" that he did not talk about some martial way to describe deportations, but about physical extermination and murder. He reminded the SS leaders to "never speak about it in public" and that the "glory" to have "remained decent" despite the hard task is "never to be mentioned" (Doc. 2). 

These documents by a leading figure of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question reveal two important elements, which are also to be found in contemporary sources on the extermination camps: camouflage and secrecy. Both elements are incompatible with the assertion by Holocaust deniers that these sites were mere transit camps.

Transportation to the East was already the most innocent official claim anyway. According to an internal expert opinion from the RSHA department II A 4 (Reich defense affairs) on revelations of a member of Eichmann's department, mere "evacuation plans" against Jews (without mentioning "committed atrocities") are not to be considered "a state secret", "these measures are by and large not even capable to be kept secret" and that "in part, they are even apparent from the German legislation" (letter Walter Renken to Karl Günther Husmann of 23 December 1942, BArch R 58/10678, unpaginated).

Simple resettlement through transit camps would have not required camouflage nor the highest possible level of secrecy. Apart from that, the hypothesis (not backed up by concrete evidence anyway) that millions of people - useless eaters and dangerous elements in the eyes of the Nazis - were deported from their last known destinations like Auschwitz, Kulmhof, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Minsk and from the occupied Soviet territories even further East in the rear of the fighting army is already an absurdity on its own.


Auschwitz

The head of the SS-WVHA Oswald Pohl took the same line as Himmler above during a talk to senior SS personnel in Auschwitz on 23 September 1942 and praised that they have "an ideal attitude towards...the issues and the special tasks, about which we do not have to speak words" (Doc. 3).

Duty notes of May 1944 show that SS personnel was specifically obliged to "unconditional secrecy during the measures to carry out the Jewish evacuation", notable "also vis-à-vis my comrades" (Doc. 4).

The extermination of the Hungarian Jews started in Auschwitz at the time. In order to conceal what was going on the exterminations sites, the erection of thick camouflage fences was planned (Doc. 5). These are well visible on aerial photographs of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex next to the barbed-wire fence (Figure 1).

The screen was at first only erected at crematorium 2 and the Bunker 2 site. The full extension was pushed in mid-June 1944 when Pohl ordered the "camouflage of the crematories,  and  security  measures  by  constructing  a  second  fence  (the camouflage has to be effected by rush-mats...)" (Doc. 6, Figure 2).

On the photograph below of 25 August 1944, the screen is fully developed at all crematoria and the Bunker 2 site.


Figure 1: Aerial Photograph of Auschwitz-Birkenau of 25 August 1944 with its extermination sites Bunker 2 (left), Crematoria 4 & 5 (top) and Crematoria 2 & 3 (bottom).

Figure 2: Part of the camouflage fence found after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, from Swiebocka, Auschwitz: A History in Photographs, p. 71




Aktion Reinhardt 

On the extermination camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka (Aktion Reinhardt camps) operated by Odilo Globocnik in the Lublin area, Himmler remarked on 23 June 1942 towards the organizer of the Euthanasia programme Viktor Brack, who provided "a part of my men" to these camps, that the whole action against the Jews should be carried out "as fast as possible" and "if only for reasons of concealment" (Doc. 7).

Brack agreed with this view according to his "own experience", a reference to the difficulties with hiding the Euthanasia action in Germany (see also letter of Kurt Blome to Arthur Greiser of 18 November 1942 on the intended extermination of tuberculosis sick Poles that "if absolute secrecy could be guaranteed, all scruples, regardless of what nature, could be overcome. But I consider simply maintaining secrecy impossible. Experience has taught that this assumption is true", Doc. 34 here).

The staff of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor had to issue duty notes that obliged them to the highest possible secrecy. It stated "that under no circumstances I am permitted to send any information to the outside of the circle of employees in the 'Einsatz Reinhardt' verbally or in writing about the course, the execution or events of the Jewish settlement", which "persists even after leaving the service". The operation was classified as "Secret State Affair" (Doc. 8).

Also after the end of the operation, Globocnik made sure that the secrecy of the camps was maintained. He reported to Himmler that "the facilities set up for the action...have been completely removed" and that "for supervision reasons, a small farm was created in each camps, which is occupied by an expert" (Doc. 9).

Kulmhof


A proposal for decorating a member of "Sonderkommando Lange" with the War Merit Cross 2nd Class was justified with the explanation that the "special tasks require the use of the whole person and the toughest nerves", but that "it is not possible to speak about the details of the tasks carried out for reasons of special secrecy" (Doc. 10).

When the Sonderkommando in Kulmhof approached its quota of exterminating 100,000 Jews in mid 1942, Himmler approved (initially) of "having protectorate people and stateless persons of Polish origin who live within the territory of the Reichsgau Warthegau and are infected with open tuberculosis handed over for special treatment" to Sonderkommando Lange, but ordered "to discuss the individual measures in detail with the Security Police first in order to carry out the task with the least possible attraction of attention" (Doc. 11).

The sorting camp Pabianice operating "in the interest of Sonderkommando Kulmhof", where the looted belongings of the murdered Jews were inspected and sorted (see Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Pabianice Sorting Camp, especially Document 96), was likewise declared part of the "Secret State Affair" (Doc. 12).

In March 1943, the extermination camp was about to get closed down and the men of the Sonderkommando were to be sent to anti-partisan warfare on the Balkans (see Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Farewell). Rudolf Brandt forwarded Himmler's request to Kaltenbrunner "to urge them to rule off the time of their Sonderkommando and not to speak of it even suggestively" (Doc. 13).


Documents


1.) Letter by Heinrich Himmler to Ernst Kaltenbrunner of 9 April 1943:
...
Secret State Affair!
...
I have received the statistical report of the Inspector of Statistics about the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

I consider this report quite good as potential material for later times, namely for camouflage purposes. At the moment it may not be published or forwarded.

The most important thing to me is still that now as much as humanly possible Jews are deported to the East. In the short monthly reports of the Security Police I want only to get notified on the number of deported people and what is left of the Jews at this time.
(BArch NS 19/1570, p. 41, cf. ns-archiv.de [with wrong date in the transcription], my emphasis)


2.) Speech by Heinrich Himmler of 4 October 1943:
I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly.

It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.

Just as we did not hesitate on June 30 to carry out our duty, as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken, and never will speak.

That was, thank God, a kind of tact natural to us, a foregone conclusion of that tact, that we have never conversed about it amongst ourselves, never spoken about it, everyone shuddered, and everyone was clear that the next time, he would do the same thing again, if it were commanded and necessary.

I am talking about the Jewish evacuation: the extermination of the Jewish people.

It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people is being exterminated," every Party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter."

And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all the others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew.

And none of them has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through, and -- with the exception of human weaknesses -- to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned
(NARA, RG 239, PS-1919; sound recording; English translation from here, my emphasis)

3.) Speech by Oswald Pohl to senior SS personnel on 23 September 1942:
"During today’s observations I have silently noticed that you have an ideal inner relation to the issue at stake and an ideal attitude towards the tasks at hand. This conclusion is especially necessary in relation with the issues and the special tasks, about which we do not have to speak words–issues that belong however to your responsibilities. I observe that you do your duty from an inner obligation and this is the precondition for results."
(The Van Pelt Report, citing Osobyi Moscow, 502/1–17; USHRI Washington, RG 11.001M.03–19; my emphasis)


4.) Duty notes sworn by SS personnel in May 1944:
"1.) I am aware, and I was today reminded of the fact, that I will be punished with death, if I steal for myself Jewish property of any kind.

2.) Most importantly, I will maintain unconditional secrecy during the measures to carry out the Jewish evacuation, and also vis-à-vis my comrades.

3.) I pledge myself to commit my entire person and my capacity for work toward the swift and smooth execution of these measures."
(August Bielisch of 20 May 1944, in Leide, NS-Verbrecher und Staatssicherheit, p. 262; Gottfried Weisse of 24 May 1944 and Gerhard Appel of 25 May 1944, in Faschismus - Getto - Massenmord, p. 373; my emphasis)


 5.) Letter by Karl Bischoff of 17 May 1944:
"For the safety measures (camouflage) of the crematoria at Auschwitz, the necessary documents for the allocation and the application for construction material are to be prepared immediately and to be submitted here."
(Rudolf (ed.), Air-Photo Evidence, 5th edition, p.71-72, citing RGVA, 502-1-313, p. 4; my emphasis)


6.) Memo by Werner Jothann of 17 June 1944 (on a conference with Oswald Pohl the previous day):
"Camouflage of the crematories,  and  security  measures  by  constructing  a  second  fence  (the camouflage   has   to   be   effected   by   rush-mats   which   have   to   be   obtained by  the  SS garrison administration)."
(NO-2359, Pohl Case, p. 165, my emphasis)


7.) Letter by Viktor Brack to Heinrich Himmler of 23 June 1942:
Honorable Mr. Reichsführer!

On instruction from Reichsleiter Bouhler I placed a part of my men at the disposal of Brigadeführer Globocnik some considerable time ago for his special task. Following a further request from him, I have now made available more personnel. On this occasion Brigadeführer Globocnik pressed the view that the whole action against the Jews should be carried out as quickly as it is in any way possible, so that we will not some day be stuck in the middle should any kind of difficulty make it necessary to stop the action. You yourself, Mr. Reichsführer, expressed the view to me at an earlier time that one must work as fast as possible, if only for reasons of concealment. Both views are more than justified according to my own experience, and basically they produce the same results. Nevertheless I beg to be permitted to present the following consideration of my own in this connection:

According to my impression there are at least 2-3 million men and women well fit for work among the approx. 10 million European Jews. In consideration of the exceptional difficulties posed for us by the question of labour, I am of the opinion that these 2-3 million should in any case be taken out and kept alive. Of course this can only be done if they are in the same time rendered incapable of reproduction.

[...]
(BArch NS 19/1583, translation from here, my emphasis)


8.) Duty note form dated 18 July 1942:
Through SS-Hauptsturmführer Höfle as head of the main department "Einsatz Reinhardt" at the SS and police leader in the district of Lublin, I have been informed and instructed in detail:

1. that under no circumstances I am permitted to send any information to the outside of the circle of employees in the "Einsatz Reinhardt" verbally or in writing about the course, the execution or events of the Jewish settlement;

2. that the events of the Jewish settlement are subject to a "Secret State Affair" in the sense of the classified regulation.

[...]

4. about an explicit ban on photographing in the camps of the "Einsatz Reinhardt";

[...]

I am aware that the duty of secrecy persists even after leaving the service.
(photostat in BArch B 162/21969, p. 56, see also Verfolgung und Ermordung der Juden 1933−1945, Band 9, p. 336, citing APMM, II/1 as original; my emphasis)


9.) Report by Odilo Globocnik of 18 January 1944:
Secret State Affair

4 copies
First copy

Economic Part of Aktion Reinhardt
[...]

The facilities set up for the action from funds which, however, are to be regarded as Reich funds have been completely removed. For supervision reasons, a small farm was created in each camps, which is occupied by an expert. An annuity has to be paid to him in order to maintain the farm.
(NO-057, my emphasis)


10.) Proposal for War Merit Cross 2nd Class of 28 March 1942:
B. is currently working for Sonderkommando Lange. He has proven himself outstanding during the duty. In tireless work he has performed the tasks assigned to the Sonderkommando and has done extremely valuable work. Performing these special tasks requires the use of the whole person and the toughest nerves. Although it is not possible to speak about the details of the tasks carried out for reasons of special secrecy, so much can be said that his activity lies in carrying out important war tasks.
(BArch R 601/1478, my emphasis)



11.) Letter by Heinrich Himmler to Arthur Greiser of 27 June 1942:
Secret State Affair

Reichsführer SS                       Führer Headquarters 27 June 1942
Journal no. 1247/42

Re: Yours of 1 May 1942 P 802/42

Bra./V.

Reichs governor SS Obergruppenführer Greiser, Posen

1.) 
Dear Comrade Greiser:
I am sorry that I was not able until today to give a definite answer to your letter of 1 May 1942.

I have no objection to having protectorate people and stateless persons of Polish origin who live within the territory of the Reichsgau Warthegau and are infected with open tuberculosis handed over for special treatment as you suggest as long as their disease is incurable according to the diagnosis of an official physician. I would like to request, however, to discuss the individual measures in detail with the Security Police first in order to carry out the task with the least possible attraction of attention.
Heil Hitler!

Yours, signed H. Himmler.
(BArch NS 19/1585, p. 10, cf. NARA/T-175/R-103/438 and NO-244, translation based on Nuremberg translation, my emphasis)


12.) Letter by Hans Biebow to Reichsschutzluftbund Ortsgruppe Litzmannstadt West of 15 March 1943:
Among other things, Mr. Seifert is head of a Jewish camp located outside Litzmannstadt operating under "Secret State Affair".
(APL/212/30731, p. 348, my emphasis)


13.) Letter of Rudolf Brandt to Ernst Kaltenbrunner of 29 March 1943:
The Reichsführer SS                          Field Command Post, 29 March 1943
Personal staff
Journal no. 39/110 / 43g.
Bra/V.
                                    Secret

To
SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Kaltenbrunner

Dear Gruppenführer!

I would like to send you a copy of a letter written by the Gauleiter and Reichstatthalter Greiser to the Reichsführer-SS on 19 March 1943.

The Reichsführer-SS wishes the use of the 85 men under SS-Hauptsturmführer Bothmann as a unit after their holiday in the SS volunteer division "Prinz Eugen".

The Reichsführer will ask you to gather the men before their engagement and urge them to rule off the time of their Sonderkommando and not to speak of it even suggestively.

The head of the SS Leadership Office, SS-Gruppenführer Jüttner, has merely received from me the notification that in the course of April 85 men with their commander can be assigned as a unit to the SS volunteer division "Prinz Eugen".

Heil Hitler!

yours, signed Brandt
SS-Obersturmbannführer
(BArch B 162/601, unpaginated, my emphasis)


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