The Pyres of Dresden

[Callafangers]

The photos of the pyres at Dresden and Ohrdruf, prove that a pyre, set with wood below rails and corpses on the rails, once set alight, will burn without having to add additional wood or other fuel, to produce a partial cremation, with some ashes and some body parts. A mix of ashes and body parts are what was found buried at the AR camps.

This represents the fundamental misunderstanding Nessie has.

Here is what is true:

• Corpses being cremated can and do, eventually, become combustible once the water has evaporated and the remaining fat becomes something of an accelerant, making the corpse have something of a candle-like 'wicking effect', producing heat/energy that can assist in the cremation of other corpses in mass pyres.

But here is where Nessie's big fail lies:

• Before this 'wicking effect' (combustion phase) can occur, the corpse has to release/evaporate its water (evaporation phase), which itself also carries heat away from other corpses upon evaporation. Moreover, for the combustion phase, the energy released by each corpse would have been minimized given the widely-reported emaciation of most [Jewish] corpses. This makes a huge difference since almost all of the combustion energy per corpse comes from fat (but even with average/normal corpses, it only reduces the wood needed by ~30-40%). Overall, the lack of body fat in Jewish corpses easily cancels-out any of the moderate gains in efficiency that could otherwise be observed in mass cremation vs. single cremation, keeping the requirement of ~300-500 kg of wood required per corpse (depending on dry vs. green wood and other factors) intact.

In other words, yes, you can barbecue a steak and the fat will ignite/combust, charring your steak. And if you have multiple steaks on the grill on top of one another, the flaming fat of steaks underneath can assist in the cooking ("cremation") of the other steak(s). But the water evaporation of the steaks on bottom will also have slowed down the cooking of the other steaks. And if you have steaks which have been modified to have near-zero fat content, the powerful assistive impact of fat combustion is cancelled out. All of this is calculated/measured/discussed in-detail in Mattogno's works, with authoritative references, and further reinforced by the more recent peer-reviewed research on outdoor pig cremations which suggests an estimate of ~300-500kg per corpse may actually be too low.

All in all, it is inescapable that your "set it and forget it" nonsense has been 100% debunked. All of the science of thermodynamics and all of the evidence of alleged cremations at AR camps works against you.

You cannot claim to 'care about evidence' and yet put your head so deeply in the sand on this matter.

[Wetzelrad]

Nessie is derailing the thread with false and fallacious arguments. A brief response:

"No photo shows anyone at the pyres. They are not being tended." False. Some of the photos do show dozens of people around the pyres. And if fuel was not added to the pyres over time, they would have piled the bodies directly on top of the wood. The only reason for the grill design was to add fuel over time.

"At the AR camps, it was done to prevent body counts [...]" Nonsense that only Nessie believes. Practically every history of the Holocaust says that cremation was used to prevent anyone from discovering that it had happened, thus eliminating the burden of proving that there were bodies. If they weren't fully cremated, there would have to be millions of partially-cremated bodies yet to be found.

"Witnesses to the AR cremations, reported that the pyre was set, lit and then left to burn for many hours, till they went out, and the remains were buried." If this statement was true, it would simply be another demonstrative proof that the witnesses are untrustworthy. Human bodies need fuel to burn. They can not burn themselves.

"The Dresden pyres, as shown in the photos and from witness descriptions, were more thorough [...]" Opposite world. Witnesses to both claim the bodies were reduced to ash. Only the holocaust witnesses claim the bones were ground down in mills, then made to disappear entirely.

"The remians of the pyre at Ohrdruf, shows what was likely left, from a burn at the AR camps." Lmao, this is idiocy. Wood would not be piled on top of the remains after cremation.

"That claim is not backed up by the Dresden and Ohrdruf photos, which show how the wood is set alight under the corpses, the fire spreads to the corpses, which then burn down to some ashes and larger body parts." False. The furthest-along photos we see of a pyre at Dresden show that the pile of bodies was 0% reduced in height, indicating that the bodies were 0% cremated at that time. We do observe that fire ignited in the corpses. Obviously this is because there was flammable material there: straw and clothing.

"Your argument that because you cannot work out, based on an experiment and your thoughts, therefore it did not happen, is LOGICALLY FLAWED." I have long wondered how Holocaust Believers would respond to a definitive, scientific proof that outdoor cremation was impossible as claimed. Nessie's response is rank denial.

"According to so-called revisionists, this must be fake, as a BBQ cannot catch fire, causing the meat to burn." Notice how grilled meat never cremates itself? Now imagine 50 kg of fresh meat with organs and bones.

[Leif F.]

The pyre in Hahn's photos isn't the only pyre that was built.

It's not clear that one single pyre was refilled with wood and corpses over two weeks, then all the ash transported to the cemetery.

On 20 February 1945, with the approval of Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann and the Dresden city council, the decision was made to cremate the recovered corpses as a supplementary measure to the on-going burials at the Heidefriedhof. Through 5 March, 6,865 bodies were burned on the southern side of the Altmarkt.
...
"There was no other choice left but to stop the burials and to allow the cremation of the bodies, which took place in the Old Market Square, where huge grates were built from iron girders, on each of which around 500 bodies were stacked in pyres, soaked with gasoline, and burned." (translated from German)

‘A Blemish on the History of the Twentieth century’? Legends and Fabrications Surrounding the Mass Cremations in the Wake of the Dresden Air Raids, February 1945
https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2018.1548126

Irving's main source seems to be Hahn, who took photos on only one day, February 25. Irving writes the pyre was moved, and echoes the 400-500 corpses per pyre of the above eyewitness quoted in the journal article.

On top of the grill were heaped the corpses, four or five hundred at a time, with more straw between each layer.
...
In the late hours of the evening the grill was re-erected over a different part of the square. Nazi Party officials saw to it that the ashes and charred bones were collected and taken to the cemeteries to be buried too.

Apocalypse 1945, p. 235.

So that's 14-18 pyres of 400-500 corpses each to get to the total, with transports to the cemetery of ashes and charred bones.

Between February 21 and March 5, when the last pyre was lit, 6,865 bodies were burned on the Altmarkt. Afterward, when the fire cooled down, it was estimated that between eight and ten cubic meters of ash covered the cobbled surface of the medieval square.

Clearly, Taylor or his sources are not in any way claiming that the Dresden cremations entirely reduced these corpses down to 8-10m³. It is physically impossible by almost an order of magnitude, even if fully reduced and if wood ash were somehow perfectly separated from corpse ash. Thus, he's simply describing how much ash was literally on the surface in that moment, having nothing to do with any technical estimate of corpse reduction.

Taylor is very unclear. "When the last pyre was lit" indicates this wasn't the same as the "first pyre."

So when the "last pyre" cooled down, there were 8-10 m³ of ash? With all the pyres, that would be 112-180 m³ of ash.

He could also be referring to residual ash from the two weeks of burning that had "covered the cobbled surface," which had been blown by wind.

Spoiler

The pyres themselves are certainly too small to cover the entire cobbled surface of the square.

"The pyre in Hahn's photos isn't the only pyre that was built"

- It is this I wonder, may one ask what lead you to that conclusion?

When looking at the sources available what I see is:

1- Irving specifically speaks of "the grill", not plural.

He claims this one was then moved (every day?), though I do really wonder if he is right about that, why would you go through the enormous effort to move those awfully heavy long I-beam girders and rudimentary stone/brick pillars (and to note also as Hahn`s pictures show in interesting detail the girders were actually intertwined with either heavy steel-wire or cables, creating a sort of net on which the corpses were placed), just to get to the ash, which could (and as photos indicate was) easily raked out from underneath?
This makes no sense that I can see, either there was one, stationary or indeed there was/were (an)other(s), but against the latter seems to speak that:

2- Hahn`s photos seem to show only one and no trace on the entire Altmarkt square anywhere of additional I-beam-girders or pillar-stones prepared for an additional one?

And given that for the entire 2 weeks cremation operation ONLY THE LEFT SIDE - seen from Germania-statue facing forward- OF THE ALTMARKT SQUARE WAS USABLE, THE ENTIRE RIGHT WAS DUG UP (therefor the earth-mounds/dam all around) and transformed into the notorious water-reservoir or "Löschteich" (-also pictured by Hahn- for the fire-brigade where many people sadly drowned during the bombing), and large portions of this left side were apparently used to first lay/spread out the all the hundreds of victims and try to identify and document them and with space needed for all the in-and outgoing traffic to transport all the necessities of this operation around, not too much space for additional pyres seems to have been easily available?

https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0314634

3- Regarding Taylor what I found astonishing is that what he says about the pyres is provably factually entirely false, the corpses were not burned on "window-shutters" at all as he claims, but around 8 rows of singular I-beam steel girders (probably of the DIN 1025 I-24 type, meaning around 24 cm high, 12 cm wide, as pictures seem to indicate) and neither were they just simply "put on the ground" (which would have been the most ineffective cremation construction imaginable), but elevated on 50-60 cm high pillars of stone.

Those are extremely strange mistakes he makes, which are rather inexplicable, given that even one of Hahn`s photos should have corrected them and can only mean he did not even bother to look at those?

In addition his loose drawing in of a claim regarding "SS-men supervising the cremation....coming from the notorious death camp Treblinka" which I find nowhere substantiated by anything (anyone who has?) and his general way of not sourcing his claims throughout his book (link to it online in one of my previous posts) in anyway thoroughly, has personally made me being rather disappointed with his scholarship and not sure whether to put much value to his factual claims..?

Any ideas?

[Leif F.]

Irving , The destruction of Dresden, unfortunately cannot read the pagenumber (do you have it?) nor source-links in this copy online

Page 235 or around there. Here is a link to that page of the pdf:
https://archive.org/details/david-irvin ... 4/mode/2up

1) The exact measurements of the pit at the Heidefriedhof, where exactly did Irving get those from, could you please cite the exact source if you have/he gives it?

Colonel Thierig's report is Irving's number one source, and he refers to it in the next sentence, so I assume that is where the description of the burial pit comes from. Here is the (first instance of this) citation:

HSSuPf Elbe in den Gauen Halle-Merseburg, Sachsen, und im Wehrkreis IV: Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei, ‘Schlußmeldung über die vier Luftangriffe auf den LS-Ort Dresden am 13., 14. und 15. Februar 1945,’ signed [Police colonel Wolfgang] Thierig, Eilenburg, den 15. März 1945 (Dresden city archives); first published by Walter Weidauer in Inferno Dresden (Dietz Verlag, East Berlin, 1966), 2nd edition, with an account of how a Frau Jurk of Dresden had found it in the spring of 1965 among the papers of her late father-in-law Max Jurk, whose initials (‘Ju.’) are on the document as author (pages 127f.).—Thierig, born Apr 2, 1890, went to Munich in 1949 after his release from communist custody (Author’s microfilm DI–35).

If not that, I would assume it's from one of many interviews Irving conducted.

Unfortunately of course again the essential parameter of depth is entirely missing, i.e. all extrapolations are pure hypothetical speculations, nonetheless, just wondering could you explain short your 68 m3, how high/deep a covering layer of soil on top of the ash did you assume, one foot ?

I think 6 ft is a reasonable estimate, with consideration for the location (a cemetery) and the other dimensions. There would be no reason to make it a shallow pit and plenty of reason to make it deeper.

If a 1 ft layer of soil was added, then the space left for ashes was ~57 cubic meters. If they also layered in as much sand as ashes, then the volume of ashes would still be ~28 cubic meters. Just estimates.

We can estimate it another way by counting the trucks. Grok gave me a load volume estimate of 3 cubic meters for a contemporary "large truck with trailer" and 0.4 cubic meters for a "small horse drawn cart". So perhaps in the area of ~32 cubic meters of ash.

[...] because we have no exact objective report/data at all to what degree those bodies were indeed really reduced to (at least 90%) ash or if they were mostly just charred/carbonized- as the main objective stated by above Irving quote mentions for epidemic preventing purposes-, with only a fraction really to ash, [...]

On this question, it seems plausible to me that the bodies at the Altmarkt were fully reduced. All of the photos show piles of ash and cremains that are not quite a fine powder but definitely reduced to small bone fragments. We can hypothesize that the piles' contents could be camouflaged by the finest wood ash, which would be the last thing swept up, but even so, we don't see anything like a scorched body or parts thereof.

From the perspective of someone assigned to that cremation detail, it should have been obvious that if any human material was left unburnt then it should be returned to the grill for the next cycle. On the other hand, it's possible they had explicit orders to conserve fuel or to only scorch the bodies. And if most or all of the photos come from a single hour of a single day then we have a pretty incomplete picture of events.

Your other questions are interesting but beyond my ability to speak on, so I will leave them for someone else.

Thanks for the sources, quotes and clarifying.

"Pretty incomplete picture of events" sadly sums it all up neatly...

If those pyre-workers (apparently mostly East-European POW`s?) only knew at the time what enormous service to historiography they would have done if writing down exactly what and how they did things in those 2 weeks......

[Stubble]

The men working the pyre and wearing the only ppe I've seen in any photographs do not appear to be POW's.

[TlsMS93]

The cremation of the 800,000 victims at Treblinka alone would have required 5 km2 of trees, and this is because I used AI to estimate the type of trees in eastern Poland: damp wood, cremation of recently buried and emaciated bodies, a 1/3 ratio of men, women, and children, the cremation occurring between winter and spring—in short, all the factors the narrative claims occurred.

Aerial photographs do not reveal this harvesting of wood, nor does it come from outside by train or truck, without the 100,000 tons of wood. Treblinka collapses.

[pilgrimofdark]

"The pyre in Hahn's photos isn't the only pyre that was built"

- It is this I wonder, may one ask what lead you to that conclusion?

Two sources say the pyres were 400-500 bodies each. You can't get to 6,865 total without at least 14 pyres.

When looking at the sources available what I see is:

1- Irving specifically speaks of "the grill", not plural.

The metal grill could be reused. A new pyre can be built on top of an existing grill.

"The grill" does not equal "the pyre." "The grill" is part of "the pyre." If "the pyre" is only 400-500 bodies, then numerous pyres have to be built to get to 6,865 corpses.

The Walter Hahn photos need to be put in order, and some of them are flipped horizontally, but I think they show the grill being moved. Might be wrong, though.

If those pyre-workers (apparently mostly East-European POW`s?) only knew at the time what enormous service to historiography they would have done if writing down exactly what and how they did things in those 2 weeks......

If they were in the Soviet zone when Dresden was occupied, they were probably shot as collaborators.

If they were in the American/British zone, they were probably repatriated to the Soviet Union and shot as collaborators.

[Callafangers]

Quick reminder that Wembley Stadium has a capacity of about 90,000 (which makes it the second-largest sports venue in Europe). Here it is, almost at full capacity:



About ten (10) times the number of people in this crowd are what is said to be buried under Treblinka, alone.

And yet all Caroline Sturdy-Colls and her team were able to find there is spoons...

[TlsMS93]

Quick reminder that Wembley Stadium has a capacity of about 90,000 (which makes it the second-largest sports venue in Europe). Here it is, almost at full capacity:



About ten (10) times the number of people in this crowd are what is said to be buried under Treblinka, alone.

And yet all Caroline Sturdy-Colls and her team were able to find there is spoons...

The local rabbi told her that if she found human bones, she should stop. It's like telling an athlete that to figure out how long it takes to run a 100-meter freestyle, he just needs to calculate the first 10 meters.

[Stubble]

Not true, they also found a shark's tooth.

[Leif F.]

EDIT: This photo is dated 02.13, twelve days before Hahn photographed the pyres. The most-photographed pyre would later be built roughly in the center of the photo. You can see how well the street was already cleared out by then.

I think this provides the best establishing shot of the area. You can also see wagons with boxes in them. Coffins, ash containers, or something else?

Very interesting. Given how clear the area is at this time, I am inclined to think the piles we see adjacent to the pyre are indeed ash/materials (overwhelmingly wood) from the cremation process. What we do not see there is charred human remains, and these piles represent a very small amount of ash relative to the amount of wood that would be needed to fully reduce corpses down to anywhere near the level of bone fragments. From Mattogno's work, we find that one ton (1,000kg) of wood reduces to about 0.34m³ of ash. The three piles in this photo below seem to amount to around ~3m³, allowing up to ~9,000kg of wood having been used in the process by the time of this photo (less than 0.5% of what would be needed to reduce the total number of ~6,800 corpses to coarse fragments).


1.jpg


Of course, we can infer that there may have been multiple pick-ups to retrieve and dump the ash piles but what we see in the photo much more reflects very incomplete (sanitation-focused) cremation. Reducing corpses even to large bone fragments (as is done in Hindu pyres) would require 200+ times the amount of wood ash shown in these piles above, not to mention corpse remains/ash which itself adds volume.

Hence, the "miracle" of cremation at Dresden (and by extension, Reinhardt camps) remains bunk.

Just to clarify, the photograph`s dating in question in the original Dresden archives interestingly reads: Walter Hahn, 1945.02.13/1945.02.18 ( https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0667801), they are apparently unsure which is the correct one and the picture itself shows strong indication that it must have been taken on the 18th, not the 13th (the similarity between the digits 3 and 8 probably explaining the confusion), for to note :

A) the first bombs fell on Dresden on the 13th at 10 PM, a daylight photo showing the already bombed out (and cleaned up!) square on that day is thus impossible.

B) the houses around show the exact same destruction as throughout all his later (25th feb) pictures, meaning it must have been taken after the 15th, when all bombs had been dropped.

This means it was taken just 3 days before the cremations on the Altmarkt began and exactly 1 week before he shot his 21 pyre-photos.

And one thing that I both wondered about if anyone knows why and found very confusing when attempting to really get the whole image of the Altmarkt-operation together is that several of Hahn`s photos are side-reversed(mirrored)?

All those pictures by him from the 25th feb 1945 seemingly showing a pyre to the right side of the Germania-statue (facing forward) are of course a physical impossibility (given that as mentioned the right side of the square was entirely dug up and filled with water) and most easily recognized as optically artificially side-reversed by the fact that in them the visually dominating female Germania- figure absurdly now holds her spear up with her left arm, not as in reality (compare to the above mentioned correct-side photo from the 18th feb)) with her right.

Examples of false-sided/reverse-pictures:

https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0314622

https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0314617

And of the following two one must be correct and one side-reversed (given that on the first the elderly women with cotton cap is shown with her head resting to the left of the V-shaped girders, her shawl hanging to her left and the young girl with long falling hair to her left while all this is right of her, reversed in the latter):

https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0314613

https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0314614
earlier as a side effect of the type of lens he used back then.

Have not been able to find explanations of this so far, if anyone has please share, probably just some lens-effect in Hahn`s camera?

Would not be too important either but at least for me I found it very confusing when attempting to really re-create the whole Altmarkt outlay in my mind, the reverse pictures giving the impression of a much larger space and operation than it actually seems to have been.

[Leif F.]

There is limited data, and much of that is eyewitness estimations, about how many corpses were cremated on pyres, how long it took, to what extent the corpses were cremated and how much ash was produced. So-called Holocaust revisionists take that data and use it to construct arguments from incredulity, whereby they argue that cremations were not physically possible, therefore they did not happen. That form of argument is logically flawed, because just because someone cannot work out how something was possible, does not therefore mean that it cannot have happened.

The so-called revisionists do not deny the pyres at Dresden, because they are so well evidenced, in particular the photos, and because they are prepared to accept the evidence that the British bombed the city, causing a firestorm.

They then deny the pyres at the AR camps, Birkenau and Chelmno, which are also well evidenced, because they are not prepared to accept that the Nazis had gassed and then cremated hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Not being able to work out how the Nazis got the pyres to work, is not evidence to prove that there were no pyres. But the pyres at Dresden and Ohrdruf, prove that they were possible. It is just that at the AR camps, Birkenau and Chelmno, they were far larger.

Ok, thanks for feedback, I think I understand your point.

May I though drill a bit more into my core question if it might be possible to formulate and settle most basic rules of scientific objectivity and fairness that both sides agree upon?
Could it be possible to establish a somewhat double-blind fair investigation-situation or is this topic too emotionally loaded ?

How about you, can you think of any concrete rules of objectivity that you think both the other side and you yourself could agree to ? Not meant theoretically, but concretely, as example/starting point perhaps, you state specifically :

"There is limited data, and much of that is eyewitness estimations"

which seems to agree with the main point of my basic statements A1-A4 and B in former post and (please correct of course if wrong) basically what the other commentators stated in several places as well and thus this seems to be a fact/rule of objectivity that indeed all could/do agree to (?):

1. Fully objective scientific data is one category and witness testimony is another, the latter cannot be regarded reliable/scientific unless corroborated independently by enough amounts of the former.

As a generalisation, yes, but, there are circumstances where witnesses can be regarded as reliable, without corroboration from other evidence, so it is not a hard and fast rule.

What makes the eyewitnesses at the AR camps so compelling, is that that all agree, Nazi and Jew. For accused and accuser all every single one of them to agree, is strong corroboration.

(And in the case of this thread and the topic of the Dresden pyres and burials, as you state (if I summarize correctly) there isn`t even remotely enough of that, objective data, available for ANY definite conclusions (either/any which way) and what witnesses said cannot be taken as reliable proof because it is not corroborated.)

There is indeed not enough data. The witnesses, due to the known, studied, flaws of memory, recall and estimation, are not reliable in the detail, but their overall narrative about the use of mass pyres, is corroborated.

Do you agree and if so, would you agree/say it is fair to state that this rule of course applies to all sides equally, witness testimony of all sides needs to be corroborated by independent scientific data to have any value as evidence?

The rules of evidence do apply equally.
Witness evidence does not require to be corroborated by scientific data.

And perhaps the follow-up question, might it be possible what exact objective scientific "data" is/stops and where subjective interpretation starts?
Best again probably in concrete example, I personally would say/agree that the 23 photographs taken by Walter Hahn on 25th feb 1945 showing the Altmarkt pyres (in many interesting details) are fully objective data and the datapoints (size of pyres/girders/wood/location)they show cannot be (and isn`t as far as I know) disputed by anyone.

Subjective interpretation, comes from witnesses recalling, estimating and remembering the details. If a witness in Dresden had a stop watch, spreadsheet, conducted body counts and weighed remains, then they would provide scientific data.

But already when going to the official documents cited mentioning numbers and times/actions, a possibility -and infact as proven before in this case of Dresden a certainty (given that the records do not match up)- of subjective error/falsehood has come in, because they are written entirely by and through subjective humans. So already at the level of documents we cannot talk about fully scientifically reliable data anymore and preferably need independent corroboration.

Would you agree to that and if not why not If one may ask?

Dresden witnesses estimating times etc, are not providing reliable, scientific data.

Ok, thanks for clarifying, and I presume this is were the two sides usually clash and find it extremely hard to go fruitfully any further, the side presenting the orthodoxy- as you state usually accepting that "Witness evidence does not require to be corroborated by scientific data" while the revisionist side does not, is that somewhat fairly summed up?

Must say I initially probably tend more to easily understand the latter`s position in this case, but also wonder, given that I at least could in general agree to a degree with your mentioned statement and actually fully with your earlier one " As a generalisation, yes, but, there are circumstances where witnesses can be regarded as reliable, without corroboration from other evidence, so it is not a hard and fast rule"

-are the 2 sides really that far apart or at least saying at times the same/similar thing only from different angles?

If attempting at finding somewhat a middle ground:

Revisionists (in my experience at least) can be made to stretch out of their comfortzone to agreeing that indeed:
witness-testimony in certain situations is/can be entirely true and valid standing alone even without any scientific proof (given also naturally that at times it is simply physically impossible to get the latter).

And those from the other side to agree (as you did) that "The witnesses, due to the known, studied, flaws of memory, recall and estimation, are not reliable in the detail..".

So the devil lays in if there is any possibility to find somewhat of an objective fair middleground to define exactly a) where these "certain situation" start/end and b) same with the "details".., would you agree?

Interestingly what without problem apparently all sides agree on is that whatever rule may be found, it always fairly must as you state apply to all equally :
"The rules of evidence do apply equally."

Meaning -and much /all of course probably is difficult/impossible to get to the core of in theory, but needs to be tested/tried out in concrete examples- here whatever we (if ) find as middleground for the value of un-corroborated witnesses, applies to all witnesses equally, both sides, i.e. (in principle, devil of course in the detail) just as much for witnesses apparently testifying for mass-murder at the AR-camps/Auschwitz (f.ex. Wiernek, etc.) and those who testified that no mass murder happened (f.ex. Kristoffersen, etc.), we need to have an equal standard measure how to filter the wheat from the chaff, for as all agree both can-and probably are to certain degree- flawed. And I think without much problem all sides could agree that intimidation/coercion (or even outright torture) is entirely impermissible in any fair judicial/historiographical setting.

Could you stretch to agreeing to this middle-ground so far?

[Wetzelrad]

2- Hahn`s photos seem to show only one and no trace on the entire Altmarkt square anywhere of additional I-beam-girders or pillar-stones prepared for an additional one?

And given that for the entire 2 weeks cremation operation ONLY THE LEFT SIDE - seen from Germania-statue facing forward- OF THE ALTMARKT SQUARE WAS USABLE, THE ENTIRE RIGHT WAS DUG UP (therefor the earth-mounds/dam all around) and transformed into the notorious water-reservoir or "Löschteich" (-also pictured by Hahn- for the fire-brigade where many people sadly drowned during the bombing), and large portions of this left side were apparently used to first lay/spread out the all the hundreds of victims and try to identify and document them and with space needed for all the in-and outgoing traffic to transport all the necessities of this operation around, not too much space for additional pyres seems to have been easily available?

You may be right about this. I had read somewhere that there were five simultaneous pyres, but after looking over all the photos and flipping some of the photos to the correct orientation, I claimed I could see three. But none of the photos show multiple pyres at a time, so what does that tell us? Possibly there was just one pyre, and if it moved around, that would explain some of my confusion in interpreting the photos.

In addition his loose drawing in of a claim regarding "SS-men supervising the cremation....coming from the notorious death camp Treblinka" [...]

Lol, I'm glad I didn't waste my time reading what Taylor had to say.

Just to clarify, the photograph`s dating in question in the original Dresden archives interestingly reads: Walter Hahn, 1945.02.13/1945.02.18 ( https://www.deutschefotothek.de/documen ... og_0667801), they are apparently unsure which is the correct one and the picture itself shows strong indication that it must have been taken on the 18th, not the 13th [...]

Yes, definitely the 18th. My mistake was not having the dates of the bombing memorized.

[Nessie]

....

Except you don't have ~1,500,000 bodies that look anything like that? You don't have a fraction of what you need of anything approaching any number of bodies that ever looked like that.

In fact, if in 1945, examining judge Łukaszkiewicz found ~800,000 or even half, or even a quarter or even one-tenth of the alleged total of corpses that looked anything like that, then poof - that would be the holy grail evidence of the orthodox position.

Unfortunately for you, he said the exact opposite:

In what way is an area of 2 hectares, up to 7m deep, where buried cremated remains were located, not enough?

[Nessie]

Apparently, this is evidence to prove that putting flammable substances, in this case tyres and wood, under metal rails, with corpses on top of the rails, would not work....



This pyre is different, in that it uses a pit and more flammable material is piled round the corpses. Air can only be drawn in from the ends of the pits, rather than the more efficient Nazi method of having the pyre on the ground, so air can get in all around it.