On consistency of revisionists vs holohoaxers

[Archie]

Nessie frequently says the holohoaxer side is in complete agreement and is therefore correct while revisionists supposedly cannot agree among themselves and are therefore wrong.

Back on topic, and away from attacks on a forum member, having been there too many times before, a question about evidence and implementation.

Can any so-called revisionist explain why, when they try to revise history, they come up with so many alternatives?

For me, the reason is because of their failure to evidence any revised alternative in a convincing way. They are all so unconvincing that none are able to appeal to a majority and for there to be a consensus.

The implication that the more "consistent" side must also have the stronger case is dubious to begin with. The Holocaust side is indeed very "consistent" in some respects, as are all religions. However, this is a reflection of dogmatism rather than justified certainty. Conversely, disagreement is not necessarily bad but is often a healthy sign of rigorous investigation.

Wildly contradictory positions often do reflect inadequate evidence or very conjectural interpretations, but if hard evidence is in fact lacking then it is more honest to have disagreement than to present a fraudulent certainty.

How Consistent or Inconsistent Are Revisionists?

Contrary to Nessie, revisionists are in reasonably good agreement. The main example he harps on is over potential secondary uses for the Birkenau Kremas where there is the Butz/Crowell air raid shelter hypothesis vs Mattogno's disinfestation hypothesis. It is fallacious to say that disagreement per se disproves either position. It is fair to say that such disagreement does indicate that the evidence for either position is not conclusive (note that this is not the same thing as not true). But so what? This is also true of the mass homicidal gassing position. The mass gassing position has the additional problem of denying the well-established primary use which was corpse storage.

Sometimes there is some uncertainty over interpretation. Interpreting construction documents decades after the fact without complete context is generally hard. Nessie pretends like it is easy. It is only "easy" for him because he is working from a predetermined conclusion.

How Consistent is the Orthodox Side?

Nessie also implies that the orthodox side is consistent. Because they all agreement on the gas chambers, for example. But if Nessie had ever bothered to read any of the Holocaust literature (I can tell from his ignorance that he never has even after all these years), he would know that there are major inconsistencies in the Holocaust histories, especially if you look at how the story has shifted over time.

On the Birkenau Kremas, Nessie says revisionists are inconsistent while being totally ignorant of what his own side says about this. The story for years was that these facilities were planned from the beginning as extermination facilities with gas chambers. But in the late 1980s, Pressac gave a very different story.

Concerning the history of the camp, it could be demonstrated that the Kremas had started off as normal sanitary facilities; then later changed into liquidation centers for “Jews unable to work”, that is women, children and the elderly.

What I indicate as being " criminal traces" arise from the difference between the normal installations of a normal crematory, one intended just to incinerate the dead and primarily including one or more mortuaries, along with an autopsy room which was legally mandated and a room for furnaces and coke storage; and those in an abnormal crematory which would have a homicidal gas chamber. This installation or this transformation required particular pieces of equipment which one finds mention of in the SS correspondence with the civilian firms or in their building site logs. A better definition would be “traces of criminal installations”. The search for such “traces” would not be possible if the Kremas had a criminal beginning, as the Polish historians believed for 40 years.

We see here that the orthodox side has been anything but consistent.

The "final solution" is another place where we find major contradictions. Some have argued that Hitler was planning to exterminate the Jews from the 1920s and that the extermination program kicked into high gear around the time of Barbarossa. The Goering decree in the summer of 1941 is interpreted as an extermination order. The Nuremberg judgment also concluded that the "final solution" began in the summer of 1941. Meanwhile others say Hitler was not planning a full extermination until late in 1941, months later. Gerlach claims Hitler made the decision in December 1941 (based on rather flimsy evidence). This is the view Nick endorses. Browning says October 1941 based on his differing interpretations. The more modern theories also stress the more gradual and improvised nature of the process.

We could add to this the many contradictions over numbers.

[Nessie]

Nessie frequently says the holohoaxer side is in complete agreement and is therefore correct while revisionists supposedly cannot agree among themselves and are therefore wrong.

My point is not as simple as you make it out to be. As is normal, you miss out the role of evidence. You do that, because so-called revisionists cannot revise and produced an evidenced chronology, a point I need to repeat, much to your annoyance.

The historians are in agreement, because of the evidence and it is the evidence, rather than the agreement, that means they are correct. So-called revisionists cannot evidence what happened, so they come up with various completing hypothesis, which proves how weak their case is.

[Nessie]

....

How Consistent or Inconsistent Are Revisionists?

Contrary to Nessie, revisionists are in reasonably good agreement. The main example he harps on is over potential secondary uses for the Birkenau Kremas where there is the Butz/Crowell air raid shelter hypothesis vs Mattogno's disinfestation hypothesis. It is fallacious to say that disagreement per se disproves either position.

It does when one hypothesis is that they were used as delousing chambers, when many argue they were barely exposed to any HCN. It is possible to shelter in a gas chambers, during a raid, as is evidenced to have happened. Taking a shower in a corpse store is not "good agreement".

As for secondary uses, the Leichekeller can only have had one use at a time, excepting impromptu sheltering from an air raid. There is no such thing as a combined shower and corpse store, or delousing chamber.

It is fair to say that such disagreement does indicate that the evidence for either position is not conclusive (note that this is not the same thing as not true). But so what? This is also true of the mass homicidal gassing position. The mass gassing position has the additional problem of denying the well-established primary use which was corpse storage.

It is untrue to claim that the primary use was evidenced as corpse store. None of the eyewitnesses who worked there state it was used to store corpses. There are documents about sending corpses being stored around the camp to the Kremas, but not about storage at the Kremas. The corpses will have gone straight to the ovens.

Sometimes there is some uncertainty over interpretation. Interpreting construction documents decades after the fact without complete context is generally hard. Nessie pretends like it is easy. It is only "easy" for him because he is working from a predetermined conclusion.

Construction Office and Topf & Sons documents record the construction of undressing rooms, gas chamber/cellars and mass creamtion ovens. They make zero reference to corpse stores, showering, bomb shelters or delousing. Those documents do not require interpretation, unless one is trying to interpret something that the documents do not mention. It is "easy" for me, because I am following the evidence, for 100% of the eyewitnesses, corroborated by the documents and circumstantial evidence.

You have a "difficult" time, because you are not following the evidence and cannot produce a chronology of the usage of the Kremas and the two farm house bunkers at Birkenau.

When were they all used for storing corpses and when and where did the secondary uses take place?
How is corpse storage correct and all the other suggested uses wrong?

How Consistent is the Orthodox Side?

Nessie also implies that the orthodox side is consistent. Because they all agreement on the gas chambers, for example. But if Nessie had ever bothered to read any of the Holocaust literature (I can tell from his ignorance that he never has even after all these years), he would know that there are major inconsistencies in the Holocaust histories, especially if you look at how the story has shifted over time.

There is historical consistence about the usage of the AR camps, Chelmno and A-B Kremas. Mass transports arrived, there were some selections (mostly in A-B), those not needed for work were gassed, the corpse cremated, or buried then cremated and property stolen.

On the Birkenau Kremas, Nessie says revisionists are inconsistent while being totally ignorant of what his own side says about this. The story for years was that these facilities were planned from the beginning as extermination facilities with gas chambers. But in the late 1980s, Pressac gave a very different story.

There is historical disagreement, and some unknowns, about the planning for the Kremas. There is far less about the planning of Chelmno and A-R.

Concerning the history of the camp, it could be demonstrated that the Kremas had started off as normal sanitary facilities; then later changed into liquidation centers for “Jews unable to work”, that is women, children and the elderly.

Correct, historians can produce an evidenced chronology. For example, Krema I was a mortuary/crematorium, then a gas chambers, then an air raid shelter when additional internal wall were constructed and the chimney removed. The farm houses were homes, then seized and used as gas chambers and then demolished.

What I indicate as being " criminal traces" arise from the difference between the normal installations of a normal crematory, one intended just to incinerate the dead and primarily including one or more mortuaries, along with an autopsy room which was legally mandated and a room for furnaces and coke storage; and those in an abnormal crematory which would have a homicidal gas chamber. This installation or this transformation required particular pieces of equipment which one finds mention of in the SS correspondence with the civilian firms or in their building site logs. A better definition would be “traces of criminal installations”. The search for such “traces” would not be possible if the Kremas had a criminal beginning, as the Polish historians believed for 40 years.

We see here that the orthodox side has been anything but consistent.

It is not clear where the historical inconsistency is, there. Buildings originally designed as mortuaries/crematoriums were repurposed as gas chambers. All historians agree on that. So-called revisionists claim the buildings were converted from their intended use to be showers, delousing chambers or bomb shelters.

The "final solution" is another place where we find major contradictions. Some have argued that Hitler was planning to exterminate the Jews from the 1920s and that the extermination program kicked into high gear around the time of Barbarossa. The Goering decree in the summer of 1941 is interpreted as an extermination order. The Nuremberg judgment also concluded that the "final solution" began in the summer of 1941. Meanwhile others say Hitler was not planning a full extermination until late in 1941, months later. Gerlach claims Hitler made the decision in December 1941 (based on rather flimsy evidence). This is the view Nick endorses. Browning says October 1941 based on his differing interpretations. The more modern theories also stress the more gradual and improvised nature of the process.

We could add to this the many contradictions over numbers.

There is a disagreement about the development of the Holocaust. You admit that disagreement can be as minor as a few months. That is nothing like the disagreements between so-called revisionists and the usage of the Kremas and farm house/bunkers.

[Wetzelrad]

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

[Nessie]

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

That you example uncertainty about chemistry and the Kremas, shows how consistent the history of the operation of the Kremas is.

[Archie]

It is not clear where the historical inconsistency is, there. Buildings originally designed as mortuaries/crematoriums were repurposed as gas chambers. All historians agree on that. So-called revisionists claim the buildings were converted from their intended use to be showers, delousing chambers or bomb shelters.

Nessie, you are being intentionally obtuse.

The Kremas were planned in summer of 1942. This is AFTER the "final solution" was supposedly declared. Hence it was assumed these were purpose built FOR extermination and WITH gas chambers from the beginning. Given this timing, no "conversion" should have been necessary since the purpose should have been clear.

The Pressac theory is a radical revision. There is a huge difference between saying that the Kremas started as "ordinary" crematoria and morgues and that they decided to do mass gassings there on the fly sometime during construction and saying that Himmler ordered facilities to be built that were intended for mass gassings from the beginning.

I also don't know that it is true that "all historians" (even if we limit it only to the holohoax side) agree with the Pressac theory. It seems they try to avoid the issue for the most part. But I suspect some still favor the traditional view.

There is a disagreement about the development of the Holocaust. You admit that disagreement can be as minor as a few months. That is nothing like the disagreements between so-called revisionists and the usage of the Kremas and farm house/bunkers.

Look at this spin! A range from spring of 1941 to December 1941 is a very big spread for something as major as when Hitler ordered the extermination. For one thing, implicitly this shows that they don't have any proof for an extermination order. They not only don't have an order, they can't even work out indirectly when the order might have been issued. That is major. You saying "as minor as a few months" reveals your colossal ignorance as in the context of the war an awful was happening in "a few months." There is a world of difference between spring 1941 and December 1941. The different timelines require you to interpret documents during that period in a vastly different way. With the earlier timeline, documents in summer of 1941 would generally be interpreted genocidally whereas for the later timeline you'd be working with the the assumption that genocide had not even been decided upon yet.

There is also a massive difference between saying that Hitler was planning the Holocaust years before he came to power and saying that Hitler sort of stumbled into doing the Holocaust in the middle of the war.

[Archie]

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

Excellent example. In a Markiewicz thread, Nessie made the mistake of assuming that assuming that Markiewicz and Green had the exact same arguments which is of course not the case. He was not aware of this because he had/has not actually read any of the relevant material.

[Archie]

It does when one hypothesis is that they were used as delousing chambers, when many argue they were barely exposed to any HCN. It is possible to shelter in a gas chambers, during a raid, as is evidenced to have happened. Taking a shower in a corpse store is not "good agreement".

As for secondary uses, the Leichekeller can only have had one use at a time, excepting impromptu sheltering from an air raid. There is no such thing as a combined shower and corpse store, or delousing chamber.

LK1 was large, 7x30 meters, and LK2 was even larger. And then there was even more space when you consider the entire building. Under revisionist assumptions there would have been around maybe around 800 bodies a week to deal with. The cellars would not have been packed with bodies.

Your assumption that it would be impossible to have showers in e.g. Krema III is silly. Why not? Crowell presents a document from 1943 about a plan to add 100 showers to one of the Kremas. This never happened, but we know these planned showers were real because it talks about making use of the heat for hot water. In fact, it seems they often had showers in the crematoria for precisely that reason, so you are just totally wrong about this. I might ask you, why were they proposing adding 100 hot water showers to a gas chamber, hmm? Pressac has another inventory document referring to 14 showerheads in Krema III with no detail provided. Pressac GUESSES where these were installed and ASSUMES they were fake. He imagines that these "fake" showerheads were spread out in the gas chamber, but there is no justification for these assumptions of his and there is no reason there couldn't have been 14 real showers somewhere in the crematorium building.

Mattogno presents a document that talks about installing a hot air disinfestation device in the kremas. So you are also wrong about disinfestation uses being impossible. The Central Sauna was not completed and so it is reasonable that they might have tried (or at least considered) moving some disinfestation tasks to the kremas in the meantime.

Keep in mind as well that in many cases documents may refer to plans or proposals that never actually materialized.

[Nessie]

It is not clear where the historical inconsistency is, there. Buildings originally designed as mortuaries/crematoriums were repurposed as gas chambers. All historians agree on that. So-called revisionists claim the buildings were converted from their intended use to be showers, delousing chambers or bomb shelters.

Nessie, you are being intentionally obtuse.

The Kremas were planned in summer of 1942. This is AFTER the "final solution" was supposedly declared. Hence it was assumed these were purpose built FOR extermination and WITH gas chambers from the beginning. Given this timing, no "conversion" should have been necessary since the purpose should have been clear.

The Pressac theory is a radical revision. There is a huge difference between saying that the Kremas started as "ordinary" crematoria and morgues and that they decided to do mass gassings there on the fly sometime during construction and saying that Himmler ordered facilities to be built that were intended for mass gassings from the beginning.

Or there is a third option of, they were intended to start use as gas chambers, but that would be temporary and they would revert to being crematoriums after the ending of the Jewish transports. So it would make sense to have a design for the long term purpose.

Or there is a fourth option of, they were built as crematoriums, as that would help maintain secrecy over the actual purpose.

I also don't know that it is true that "all historians" (even if we limit it only to the holohoax side) agree with the Pressac theory. It seems they try to avoid the issue for the most part. But I suspect some still favor the traditional view.

The lack of definitive evidence, is why historians agree. Just as all the revisionist hypothesis for the Kremas do not reach consensus, due to a lack of definitive evidence for any.

There is a disagreement about the development of the Holocaust. You admit that disagreement can be as minor as a few months. That is nothing like the disagreements between so-called revisionists and the usage of the Kremas and farm house/bunkers.

Look at this spin! A range from spring of 1941 to December 1941 is a very big spread for something as major as when Hitler ordered the extermination. For one thing, implicitly this shows that they don't have any proof for an extermination order. They not only don't have an order, they can't even work out indirectly when the order might have been issued. That is major. You saying "as minor as a few months" reveals your colossal ignorance as in the context of the war an awful was happening in "a few months." There is a world of difference between spring 1941 and December 1941. The different timelines require you to interpret documents during that period in a vastly different way. With the earlier timeline, documents in summer of 1941 would generally be interpreted genocidally whereas for the later timeline you'd be working with the the assumption that genocide had not even been decided upon yet.

That is still nothing like the disagreement between revisionists over the usage of the Kremas.

There is also a massive difference between saying that Hitler was planning the Holocaust years before he came to power and saying that Hitler sort of stumbled into doing the Holocaust in the middle of the war.

How involved Hitler was, in the planning, is uncertain, due to a relative lack of evidence. What you fail to acknowledge is that the more the evidence, the greater the consistency. Hence, there is 100% consistency between historians about Babi Yar being the location of a mass shooting in 1941, of the Jews from Kiev, and that hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent to Birkenau in 1944 and gassed.