The Pyres of Dresden

[Stubble]

Take it to the Treblinka thread.

This thread is about the pyres of Dresden.

You are derailing the thread.

[Callafangers]

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:

What follows is your opinion, based on what you think happens. It is what you use to prop up your argument from incredulity.

Nessie, what follows is the indisputable science of the matter, which is why you didn't challenge it directly and instead made claims of fallacy which you don't even understand.

Every letter of what is said here is veritable fact, you can feel free to challenge it point-by-point, bring up scientific literature, even get ChatGPT to assist you. Your nervous hand-waving and deflection is transparent and duly noted.

I said:

• 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.

What of the above has anything to do with "incredulity"?

You need to look at what is evidenced to have happened, then look again. Dresden and Ohrdruf prove that pyres, set by placing wood under metal rails and corpses on top, work, at least to get partial cremations. The heat generated by the small Ohrdruf pyre was so much, it caused metal rails to bend. A bigger pyre would generate far more heat.

More slogans and BS from you. We have broken down Dresden throughout this thread. There is zero evidence of the fuel absolutely required (given endothermic demand per corpse of ~200-300 megajoules/MJ) to break the corpses down to a handful of cubic meters (and your only documented 'evidence' that this was ever the case comes from the now-demystified assertion of Frederick Taylor, who was not speaking to all cremations that had taken place). There is not a shred of evidence that Dresden involved massive reductions in corpse volume capable of assisting your arguments on Reinhardt camps.

Nobody (certainly not myself) has denied that Dresden entailed 'partial cremations' but how in the hell does this assist your claim that millions of Jews could fit underneath the relatively modest ground disturbances (especially when accounting for limited ash/cremains proportions in core samples) at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec? You need the corpse volume to have been maximally reduced, given you are already screwed on grave volume and archaeological findings. And you also need to explain what became of the wood ash and the displaced soil. News flash: you do none of this as you keep speaking slogans about 'the evidence', all while you ignore the evidence.

Heat will cause the corpses to burn, that is why, no matter the fat or liquid content of a body, if it is caught in a major fire, trapped in a car, or a house, or even clothing doused in petrol, it will burn. The evidence is that you have overestimated how much wood was needed to start a pyre and get the corpses burning. Look again at the Dresden and Ohrdruf pyres and how much wood was needed to get the corpses to burn.

Nessie, gee, I wonder where the energy required (in megajoules/MJ) comes from to be capable of burning a corpse within a house or a car fire... hmmm....

Maybe the f**cking house??? Or the car?????

You need to be more specific on what you think I've overestimated. Here's my references. Where are yours?

WOOD REQUIREMENT PER CORPSE

• Discussion of peer-reviewed study (linked) suggesting >500 kg per corpse: https://codoh.com/library/document/open ... revisited/
• TECOAR (MGK, 2014), p. 1330-1331; TORC (Mattogno, 2022), p. 282-283, 287-291
• Also see: https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1244#p1244
• And: https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1258#p1258

CORPSE ASH VOLUME PER CORPSE

• 0.008m3 per corpse with essentially complete outdoor cremation (down to bone fragments); Average 4kg ash per corpse; 4 kg = .004 ton; .004 ton / 0.5 (spec. weight) = 0.008m³ per corpse; see: TORC, p. 293; TECOAR, p. 1316

WOOD ASH VOLUME PER CORPSE

• 0.078m3 per corpse; see: TECOAR, p. 1316 (wood ash per ton of wood); Difference in dry vs. fresh wood requirements, see: TECOAR, 1330-1331

Notice that 0.078m3 / 0.008m3 = ~10x. That is, you will produce ten (10) times as much wood ash as you do corpse ash for every cremation. That means, for every bit of ash or burnt material reported in excavations, at least 90% of it must be wood ash.

Remember that all of this so far assumes generously that the cremations were indeed complete, ensuring optimal utilization of grave volume (if any less efficient, then there are even fewer corpses possible).

Here is where things get difficult for you: taking Sobibor as an example and using Kola's findings, the total reported 'disturbed ground' interpreted as possible grave volume at Sobibor is 13,700m3. We know that the actual amount of corpse ash/cremains at Sobibor must have been relatively low, given:

• Only 128 out of 185 reported grave drills (69.2%; for graves 1-7) showed any traces of grave/corpse material (cremains, lime, etc.).
• Corpses in wax fat (not cremated) sat at bottom of four graves, taking up significant volume.
• Must account for mixture with natural/surrounding soil throughout grave site due to grave robbing (which involved hundreds of individuals across decades, suggesting property burials also on-site) and documented tree removal which occurred on-site postwar.
• Must consider that Kola's core samples were taken in a grid sampled 5 meters apart, leading to unsupported inference that everything between these 5-10 meter gaps was chock-full of the same consistency anywhere ash/cremains was identified in a neighboring sample, which does not follow logically.
• Kola 2001: traces-positive core sample photos show layers and mixture of soil, sand, ash (of varying shades), and lime, with one sample entirely of apparent soil and lime (counted as grave drill). The “most obvious” ashes were at bottom layers, suggesting “less obvious” (mixed, non-ash, etc.) elsewhere.
• Mazurek 2016: Grave 1 (1720m³) and grave 2 (2000m³) contained only minimal bone-fragment cremains (mostly sand; Mazurek et al cannot explain why so little cremains, offers several hypotheses). Graves 3-4 (9267m³ total) contained large areas of sand and unburnt human remains, occupying substantial volume. Grave 5 (588m³) shows no evidence of cremation in subsurface layers. For grave 8/15 (500m³): only some 40cm of total depth/layers (50m³ vol.) includes burnt bones (cremains) in grave 8 area (250m³); grave 15 area (250m³) contains no evidence at all of cremains in backfill (only trace amounts in northern wall).
• Must account for any other burials such as property disposal (given it is known property was managed/destroyed on-site), latrines, trash pit, etc.

Altogether, given these documented constraints, it is not feasible that the actual ash/cremains volume exceeded 40-50% (and likely less than 10%) of the reported "grave volume". Any higher estimate simply cannot be reconciled with these documented facts.

And with that, if we assume a very generous 30% of total "grave volume" was actual ash+cremains, this puts us at a maximum of around ~22,500 corpses at Sobibor (calculation based on 30% of total "grave volume" divided by wood+corpse ash per corpse), which is pretty close to Muehlenkamp's $1,000 bet as to how many corpses he can 'prove' at Sobibor.

This means that the best estimate from people on both sides of this debate who actually have made some diligent effort to measure and understand the math/physics/science to the cremations as alleged at Sobibor actually agree on a reasonable estimate (I would argue this is the upper maximum and, for Muehlenkamp, this is the maximum he was willing to place a cash bet on!). But either way, it is you who is an outlier asserting over and over again your own ignorance on thermodynamics, basic math, etc -- no one who takes the science seriously can possibly agree with you.

If we take for granted this upper estimate of ~22,500, then it appears the official 'convergence of evidence' for the other ~227,500 Jews allegedly buried at Sobibor are entirely unevidenced and so, logically, invented/imagined.

Remember also that Sobibor is, of the three AR camps, the location which has the best archaeological documentation (fairly recent/authoritative, descriptions of layers allowing some extrapolation about overall quantity of ash, large quantities of reported ash) favorable for the exterminationist position. And yet what it firmly supports is a corpse quantity one full order of magnitude below (at most) to what is claimed buried there. More importantly, the documentation of what has been found at Treblinka is much poorer (see: Sturdy-Colls), but this is the opposite of what we should expect since the total corpses alleged at Treblinka are some 3-4x higher than what is alleged at Sobibor!

Belzec has had some excavations, of course, but the documentation is quite vague, although still far more favorable overall for a revisionist interpretation given things like descriptions of layers, known postwar diggings/disturbances, lack of recognition of property destruction, and false extrapolation of grave size due to limited sampling.

Overall, Nessie, for you to claim this:

What follows is your opinion, based on what you think happens. It is what you use to prop up your argument from incredulity.

...is quite comical. You do not have a clue what you are talking about. As always, you remain an activist, not a serious researcher.

[Callafangers]

I should add that the 10x wood ash compared to corpse ash actually comes from Mattogno's earlier/lower estimate of how much wood is required per corpse (he estimates ~230 kg green wood per corpse at AR camps). This lower estimate is greatly challenged in the recent pig experiments (peer-reviewed, a much more comprehensive study than had existed prior), as linked above, suggesting a much higher quantity of wood would be needed. This is also supported by the much higher wood quantities used in Hindu funeral pyres. Altogether, the 10x wood ash per corpse ash is likely too low, with 15x or even 20x being probably more accurate.

[TlsMS93]

Two hectares, up to 7m deep. That is a total volume of 140,000m3, or the same as 56 Olympic sized swimming pools. But, according to so-called revisionists, that is not space for there to be multiple mass graves, despite GPR evidence of multiple pits in that area. To be a so-called revisionist, you have to be determined to not believe the overwhelming evidence of mass graves, and pyres.

Bring back the ashes of the 800,000 bodies, why don't you? It happened and it's there to be documented. This silence is unbelievable. Don't ask me to believe in musings like turned-over soil, because anyone could be convicted of something if it's found in their backyard, and those who claim something happened say they can't turn over the soil because their religious laws prohibit it.

[Callafangers]

Two hectares, up to 7m deep. That is a total volume of 140,000m3, or the same as 56 Olympic sized swimming pools. But, according to so-called revisionists, that is not space for there to be multiple mass graves, despite GPR evidence of multiple pits in that area. To be a so-called revisionist, you have to be determined to not believe the overwhelming evidence of mass graves, and pyres.

Bring back the ashes of the 800,000 bodies, why don't you? It happened and it's there to be documented. This silence is unbelievable. Don't ask me to believe in musings like turned-over soil, because anyone could be convicted of something if it's found in their backyard, and those who claim something happened say they can't turn over the soil because their religious laws prohibit it.

Nessie concludes a volume of 140,000m3 how, exactly?

Nessie, please let us know what logic you used to determine:

• What exactly establishes a full two hectares of surface area as 'disturbed'
• What percentage of the truly-disturbed surface area is affected a full 7m deep (i.e. how on Earth you determined a full 140,000m3 volume )
• What percentage of 'disturbed' ground actually contained ANY ash material at all (rather than it simply having been dug, robbed, or bombed at war's end -- all of which are documented as having occurred at Treblinka)
• What percentage of areas containing ash material are 100% ash (or even 50%? 20%)?

Nessie chooses 'studies' or 'admissions' that are so vague as to be meaningless, and extrapolates these to mean whatever he wants. There is nothing in any of his citations/references that speak remotely to the actual quantity of human corpses buried at Treblinka. Yet Nessie wants us to believe that TEN TIMES the number of people in this crowd are actually buried there:



For locations where there is at least some degree of mapping and a breakdown of excavated layers and proportions (Sobibor, Belzec), the evidence falls powerfully against exterminationist/Nessie's views.

It is desperate clinging we see from Nessie and extreme fallacy to claim he has ascertained anything remotely near 140,000m3 of actual corpse-grave volume. He cannot even claim 14,000m3 (one-tenth his figure) with any confidence. There is not a shred of evidence to support this. On the matter of Treblinka, Keen's interpretations on this forum are among the most reasonable, given that of 800,000 alleged burials, nothing at all has been quantified or photographed based on physical/forensic findings.

Just embarrassing.

[TlsMS93]

The Nazis admitted it, as if this were an argument even for someone who incriminates themselves.

If someone claims to have killed someone and concreted them into a wall, and when the experts arrive, they find nothing, does the fact that they said that make it true? In the case of the Reinhardt camps, saying they cremated corpses doesn't constitute genocide, because the alleged scale is unproven.

[Callafangers]

If someone claims to have killed someone and concreted them into a wall, and when the experts arrive, they find nothing, does the fact that they said that make it true? In the case of the Reinhardt camps, saying they cremated corpses doesn't constitute genocide, because the alleged scale is unproven.

And the scale is what is critical, here, since without it, "missing Jews" falls firmly as an exterminationist problem and not a revisionist one. There is also the fact that cremation was the standard procedure for mitigating the spread of disease among corpses and that no one would be shocked to find some tens of thousands of Jewish corpses (mostly typhus/disease deaths) or killed/executed partisans also delivered to be cremated at locations where Jewish property was already being sorted and some of it destroyed/burned/buried. Without the extraordinary (homicidal/genocidal) scale, and with compelling evidence that Aktion Reinhardt was above all an economic (property confiscation) operation, the 'Holocaust' is dead in its tracks.

[Stubble]

Speaking of scale;

Yes, Police Colonel Wolfgang Thierig's report is in Walter Weidauer's Inferno Dresden.

That's helpful. I got the name Zeppenfeld from it, then tracked that to the actual Dresden city archives.

On page 381 of Dresden im Luftkrieg is an aerial photo of the mass grave areas at the Heidefriedhof cemetery.

Spoiler

The Heidefriedhof Cemetery on the Autobahn in the north outside of Dresden. Most of the air war victims were buried here. The mass graves appear as bright spots.

Overlaying that with Google Maps, I get about 65,000-70,000 square meters of total area. A little more or less depending on how restrictive you want to be.

Spoiler

The memorial at the cemetery states there are about 11,500 bodies in mass graves, plus the 6,865 in the ash grave.

A hectare is 10,000 square meters, so we're at around 7 hectares for 18,365 bodies.

Treblinka is claimed to be 2 hectares for 800,000 to 3 million bodies?

For most of the other questions, I can't think of a source other than contacting the Heidefriedhof and Irving's website, or searching the Dresden City or Saxon State Archives.

Side note, Pilgrimofdark is a beast...

[TlsMS93]

The problem with the Holocaust is that one always survives. There are millions of dead, but a handful survived to tell the tale. Of all the Jews shot in a region, perhaps two or three survived. In other words, the extermination was never complete. There's always someone who says their entire family was exterminated and only they survived. What are the statistical chances of this happening not just once but thousands of times in a population?

Have Jews ever said that the Jewish community existed and no longer exists? What traditions, dialects, etc., were lost? It seems they're all still there, alive and well. That would be a good topic for a new one.

[Nessie]

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:

What follows is your opinion, based on what you think happens. It is what you use to prop up your argument from incredulity.

Nessie, what follows is the indisputable science of the matter, which is why you didn't challenge it directly and instead made claims of fallacy which you don't even understand.

Every letter of what is said here is veritable fact, you can feel free to challenge it point-by-point, bring up scientific literature, even get ChatGPT to assist you. Your nervous hand-waving and deflection is transparent and duly noted.

I said:

• 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.

I replied to this. I pointed out that Dresden pyres shows the corpses releasing moisture, with smoke that looks more like steam. I also pointed out the witnesses reported that female corpses burned easier than male, which will be due to the higher fat content. As for how much wood is needed, can you not see the Dresden and Ohrdruf photos? Far less wood is needed than you think, for the pyre to burn and corpses catch fire. Some of the wood on the Ohurdruf pyre is only partially burnt, but the metal rails still bent due to the heat.

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.

IOW, a BBQ further evidences that piling meat on top of a high heat source, such as charcoal or wood, and setting that source alight, will set the meat on fire, which has enough fuel in it, the fat, to burn itself.

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.

We see set and forget at Dresden and Ohrdruf and witnesses to the AR pyres speak to it. I could add the Birkenau pyres to that, whereby corpses were cremated there as well.

What of the above has anything to do with "incredulity"?

You cannot work out how the mass pyres worked, so you claim they cannot have worked. But the evidence from Dresden, Ohrdruf, Birkenau and the AR camps, is that they did work.

You need to look at what is evidenced to have happened, then look again. Dresden and Ohrdruf prove that pyres, set by placing wood under metal rails and corpses on top, work, at least to get partial cremations. The heat generated by the small Ohrdruf pyre was so much, it caused metal rails to bend. A bigger pyre would generate far more heat.

More slogans and BS from you. We have broken down Dresden throughout this thread. There is zero evidence of the fuel absolutely required (given endothermic demand per corpse of ~200-300 megajoules/MJ) to break the corpses down to a handful of cubic meters (and your only documented 'evidence' that this was ever the case comes from the now-demystified assertion of Frederick Taylor, who was not speaking to all cremations that had taken place). There is not a shred of evidence that Dresden involved massive reductions in corpse volume capable of assisting your arguments on Reinhardt camps. [/quote]

If the photos and witness descriptions of the Dresden pyres, whereby corpses were piled on grates above wood, set on fire, burn to cremains and those cremains were carted to a cemetary and buried, is not convincing enough evidence for you, then you will not believe anythign about the pyres. Your ability to dispute evidence, is staggering.

Nobody (certainly not myself) has denied that Dresden entailed 'partial cremations' but how in the hell does this assist your claim that millions of Jews could fit underneath the relatively modest ground disturbances (especially when accounting for limited ash/cremains proportions in core samples) at Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec? You need the corpse volume to have been maximally reduced, given you are already screwed on grave volume and archaeological findings. And you also need to explain what became of the wood ash and the displaced soil. News flash: you do none of this as you keep speaking slogans about 'the evidence', all while you ignore the evidence.

The cremations at the AR camps were also partial, as proved by the archaeological findings. So, partial cremations at Dresden support the AR pyres. The ground disturbances are not modest. You have massively understated how much isturbed ground there is. You dare not state how much ground you accept is disturbed, or compare the AR sites to any other mass graves.

The wood ash was also buried, we see that with the archaeological findings. As for the soil displaced by the original digging, we are not sure, but going by witness drawings and moddeling of camps, it was stockpiled in the camp next to the graves. We see large stockpiles of earth in the Kurt Franz TII excavator photos, which those excavators are spreading over the ground.

Heat will cause the corpses to burn, that is why, no matter the fat or liquid content of a body, if it is caught in a major fire, trapped in a car, or a house, or even clothing doused in petrol, it will burn. The evidence is that you have overestimated how much wood was needed to start a pyre and get the corpses burning. Look again at the Dresden and Ohrdruf pyres and how much wood was needed to get the corpses to burn.

Nessie, gee, I wonder where the energy required (in megajoules/MJ) comes from to be capable of burning a corpse within a house or a car fire... hmmm....

Maybe the f**cking house??? Or the car?????

You need to be more specific on what you think I've overestimated. Here's my references. Where are yours?

WOOD REQUIREMENT PER CORPSE

• Discussion of peer-reviewed study (linked) suggesting >500 kg per corpse: https://codoh.com/library/document/open ... revisited/
• TECOAR (MGK, 2014), p. 1330-1331; TORC (Mattogno, 2022), p. 282-283, 287-291
• Also see: https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1244#p1244
• And: https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1258#p1258

CORPSE ASH VOLUME PER CORPSE

• 0.008m3 per corpse with essentially complete outdoor cremation (down to bone fragments); Average 4kg ash per corpse; 4 kg = .004 ton; .004 ton / 0.5 (spec. weight) = 0.008m³ per corpse; see: TORC, p. 293; TECOAR, p. 1316

WOOD ASH VOLUME PER CORPSE

• 0.078m3 per corpse; see: TECOAR, p. 1316 (wood ash per ton of wood); Difference in dry vs. fresh wood requirements, see: TECOAR, 1330-1331

Car and house fires, produce corpses that have not been burnt to ashes. They are partially burnt, like the corpses seen at Ohrdruf. If you go to pick a corpse like that up, it will likely fall apart. It would easy to render down to cremains. That mix of body parts, cremains and ash, the ash being from the wood, is what has been found by the archaeologists.

Notice that 0.078m3 / 0.008m3 = ~10x. That is, you will produce ten (10) times as much wood ash as you do corpse ash for every cremation. That means, for every bit of ash or burnt material reported in excavations, at least 90% of it must be wood ash.

Remember that all of this so far assumes generously that the cremations were indeed complete, ensuring optimal utilization of grave volume (if any less efficient, then there are even fewer corpses possible).

Here is where things get difficult for you: taking Sobibor as an example and using Kola's findings, the total reported 'disturbed ground' interpreted as possible grave volume at Sobibor is 13,700m3. We know that the actual amount of corpse ash/cremains at Sobibor must have been relatively low, given:

• Only 128 out of 185 reported grave drills (69.2%; for graves 1-7) showed any traces of grave/corpse material (cremains, lime, etc.).
• Corpses in wax fat (not cremated) sat at bottom of four graves, taking up significant volume.
• Must account for mixture with natural/surrounding soil throughout grave site due to grave robbing (which involved hundreds of individuals across decades, suggesting property burials also on-site) and documented tree removal which occurred on-site postwar.
• Must consider that Kola's core samples were taken in a grid sampled 5 meters apart, leading to unsupported inference that everything between these 5-10 meter gaps was chock-full of the same consistency anywhere ash/cremains was identified in a neighboring sample, which does not follow logically.
• Kola 2001: traces-positive core sample photos show layers and mixture of soil, sand, ash (of varying shades), and lime, with one sample entirely of apparent soil and lime (counted as grave drill). The “most obvious” ashes were at bottom layers, suggesting “less obvious” (mixed, non-ash, etc.) elsewhere.
• Mazurek 2016: Grave 1 (1720m³) and grave 2 (2000m³) contained only minimal bone-fragment cremains (mostly sand; Mazurek et al cannot explain why so little cremains, offers several hypotheses). Graves 3-4 (9267m³ total) contained large areas of sand and unburnt human remains, occupying substantial volume. Grave 5 (588m³) shows no evidence of cremation in subsurface layers. For grave 8/15 (500m³): only some 40cm of total depth/layers (50m³ vol.) includes burnt bones (cremains) in grave 8 area (250m³); grave 15 area (250m³) contains no evidence at all of cremains in backfill (only trace amounts in northern wall).
• Must account for any other burials such as property disposal (given it is known property was managed/destroyed on-site), latrines, trash pit, etc.

All of that is evidence of mass graves and cremations! Like the photos from Dresden and Ohrdruf, you just do not want to accept it as evidence.

Altogether, given these documented constraints, it is not feasible that the actual ash/cremains volume exceeded 40-50% (and likely less than 10%) of the reported "grave volume". Any higher estimate simply cannot be reconciled with these documented facts.

And with that, if we assume a very generous 30% of total "grave volume" was actual ash+cremains, this puts us at a maximum of around ~22,500 corpses at Sobibor (calculation based on 30% of total "grave volume" divided by wood+corpse ash per corpse), which is pretty close to Muehlenkamp's $1,000 bet as to how many corpses he can 'prove' at Sobibor.

This means that the best estimate from people on both sides of this debate who actually have made some diligent effort to measure and understand the math/physics/science to the cremations as alleged at Sobibor actually agree on a reasonable estimate (I would argue this is the upper maximum and, for Muehlenkamp, this is the maximum he was willing to place a cash bet on!). But either way, it is you who is an outlier asserting over and over again your own ignorance on thermodynamics, basic math, etc -- no one who takes the science seriously can possibly agree with you.

You use the sceince, to create your argument from incredulity. You put together some calcualtions, and announce that because you cannot make the calculations work, therefore there were no mass cremations on pyres. That is the illogical argument from incredulity, no matter how much you dress it up as sound science.

If we take for granted this upper estimate of ~22,500, then it appears the official 'convergence of evidence' for the other ~227,500 Jews allegedly buried at Sobibor are entirely unevidenced and so, logically, invented/imagined.

Your argument is best framed as there are not as many corpses buried and cremated at the camps, as otherwise claimed. But you do not want to commit to saying how big the graves were, or how many were buried or cremated there, as you know, it will be more than you want to admit to.

It is not logical to say that because the grave space and cremains found are not as high as you think they should be, therefore the evidence of huge mass graves and pyres with hundreds of thousands of corpses, are invented or imagined. Your mind set is to imagine and find as little grave space and cremains as possible and then find that hard to equate with the evidence of mass transports and what the witnesses state. I see the enormous, multiple Olympic sized swimming pools, volumes of disturbed ground and equate that with other mass graves, such as from earthquakes, tsunamis and disease and I cannot find any mass graves that are as big as the ones found at the AR camps. That converges with the numbers from the mass transports and what the witnesses said. You do not want that convergence, so you try to picture tiny graves and minimal cremation remains.

Remember also that Sobibor is, of the three AR camps, the location which has the best archaeological documentation (fairly recent/authoritative, descriptions of layers allowing some extrapolation about overall quantity of ash, large quantities of reported ash) favorable for the exterminationist position. And yet what it firmly supports is a corpse quantity one full order of magnitude below (at most) to what is claimed buried there. More importantly, the documentation of what has been found at Treblinka is much poorer (see: Sturdy-Colls), but this is the opposite of what we should expect since the total corpses alleged at Treblinka are some 3-4x higher than what is alleged at Sobibor!

I see the huge memorial at Sobibor, needed to cover the large amount of human cremains and remains gathered from around the site, disturbed by grave robbers. I see photos from after the site was memorialised, showing cremains still on the surface of the ground. I see large areas of excavated ground, containing human cremains, hair, and ashes. You, because of your ability to ignore evidence you do not want to see, do not see that. As for what was found at TII being poorer, you misinterpret the 1945 and 2011 site surveys. They identified huge areas of disturbed ground and multiple grave pits, which corroborate witness descriptions of mass graves and where they were located. Only you could dismiss an area of 20,000m2 by up to 7m deep as insufficient for the mass graves of hundreds of thousands of people.

Belzec has had some excavations, of course, but the documentation is quite vague, although still far more favorable overall for a revisionist interpretation given things like descriptions of layers, known postwar diggings/disturbances, lack of recognition of property destruction, and false extrapolation of grave size due to limited sampling.

Belzec has had a thorough site examination with 2000 bore hole samples, each 6m deep, being taken and examined. That identified at least 21,000m3 of disturbed ground containing a mix of cremains, ashes and decomposed corpses. For you to hand wave that away as "some" and "limited" is an utter delusion on your part.

Overall, Nessie, for you to claim this:

What follows is your opinion, based on what you think happens. It is what you use to prop up your argument from incredulity.

...is quite comical. You do not have a clue what you are talking about. As always, you remain an activist, not a serious researcher.

You frame yourself as a serious, knowledgeable researcher, who because of your brilliance, is able to say that because you cannot work out the science behind the mass pyres, they did not happen, ignoring the evidence from multiple sites from Dresden to TII, that they did.

I can point to the normal standards of evidencing used by lawyers, archaeologists, historians and journalists, that prove mass graves were dug at the death camps and corpses can be cremated on pyres, as seen at Dresden and described at TII.

[Nessie]

Two hectares, up to 7m deep. That is a total volume of 140,000m3, or the same as 56 Olympic sized swimming pools. But, according to so-called revisionists, that is not space for there to be multiple mass graves, despite GPR evidence of multiple pits in that area. To be a so-called revisionist, you have to be determined to not believe the overwhelming evidence of mass graves, and pyres.

Bring back the ashes of the 800,000 bodies, why don't you? It happened and it's there to be documented. This silence is unbelievable. Don't ask me to believe in musings like turned-over soil, because anyone could be convicted of something if it's found in their backyard, and those who claim something happened say they can't turn over the soil because their religious laws prohibit it.

Nessie concludes a volume of 140,000m3 how, exactly?

The 1945 Polish site survey identified an area of 2 hectares containing stinking ground mixed with cremated and larger human remains. Excavations found remains going as deep as 7m. That is 20,000m2 by 7m which is 140,000m3. That is the equivalent to 56 Olympic sized swimming pools. You do not want to picture that, because it is easily enough space to accommodate the mass graves described by witnesses and in part, located by the 2011 geophysical survey.

Nessie, please let us know what logic you used to determine:

• What exactly establishes a full two hectares of surface area as 'disturbed'

The 2 hectare area identified in 1945 as disturbed, will not be entirely disturbed. Geophysics and witness maps of the graves, show that the graves were dug leaving strips of undisturbed ground between them, though Wiernik's camp model, has one huge pit.

[*] What percentage of the truly-disturbed surface area is affected a full 7m deep (i.e. how on Earth you determined a full 140,000m3 volume )

I am not saying that the 2 hectares and 7m forms a perfect box, that was neatly dug out. What I am saying is, that is an area that is easily large enough to contain multiple mass graves with the dimensions estimated by the eyewitnesses and as identified by the 2011 geophysical survey.

[*] What percentage of 'disturbed' ground actually contained ANY ash material at all (rather than it simply having been dug, robbed, or bombed at war's end -- all of which are documented as having occurred at Treblinka)
[*] What percentage of areas containing ash material are 100% ash (or even 50%? 20%)?[/list]

Going by the witness maps, model, descriptions and what geophysics found in the area where five pits were found next to each other, I would estimate the graves took up 80% of the main mass grave area at TII. It seems reasonable that they have similar percentages of ash etc, as Kola found with the borehole survey.

Nessie chooses 'studies' or 'admissions' that are so vague as to be meaningless, and extrapolates these to mean whatever he wants. There is nothing in any of his citations/references that speak remotely to the actual quantity of human corpses buried at Treblinka. Yet Nessie wants us to believe that TEN TIMES the number of people in this crowd are actually buried there:

There is nothing "vague" and "meaningless" about multiple witnesses locating a series of mass graves in an area of a camp, that is studied and found to 2 hectares, up to 7m deep, containing cremated human remains and ash, that geophysics identifies a series of 5 pits, next to each other.

For locations where there is at least some degree of mapping and a breakdown of excavated layers and proportions (Sobibor, Belzec), the evidence falls powerfully against exterminationist/Nessie's views.

It is desperate clinging we see from Nessie and extreme fallacy to claim he has ascertained anything remotely near 140,000m3 of actual corpse-grave volume. He cannot even claim 14,000m3 (one-tenth his figure) with any confidence. There is not a shred of evidence to support this. On the matter of Treblinka, Keen's interpretations on this forum are among the most reasonable, given that of 800,000 alleged burials, nothing at all has been quantified or photographed based on physical/forensic findings.

Just embarrassing.

There is a ton of evidence to prove mass graves and cremains at TII. Every single witness who worked inside the camp, reports mass graves. People who worked outside the camp report seeing excavators working there. Kurt Franz photographed excavators there. An aerial photo shows large areas of disturbed ground and rectangular outlines in the ground. Archaeological and geophysical surveys have found a huge area containing multiple pits and cremated human remains. Documents record the transportation of c850,000 people to the camp. You just chose to dispute and ignore that evidence.

[Nessie]

The problem with the Holocaust is that one always survives. There are millions of dead, but a handful survived to tell the tale. Of all the Jews shot in a region, perhaps two or three survived. In other words, the extermination was never complete. There's always someone who says their entire family was exterminated and only they survived. What are the statistical chances of this happening not just once but thousands of times in a population?

Have Jews ever said that the Jewish community existed and no longer exists? What traditions, dialects, etc., were lost? It seems they're all still there, alive and well. That would be a good topic for a new one.

It would be a good topic, which would prove that entire communities of Jews disappeared, often overnight, in mass arrests, never to return.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30214204

Of the 50,000 citizens in the Polish town of Kutno, not one is Jewish - yet it staged perhaps the most impressive concert of Jewish music I've ever heard...Kutno's experience was typical. In one day the entire Jewish community - 8,000 people - was marched at gunpoint to the grounds of a deserted factory at the edge of town.
They spent two years in filthy, overcrowded conditions, with many dying of disease, hunger and cold, before being murdered in gas vans at Chelmno death camp, external."

You will find evidence of that happening all over Europe, usually with local people assisting the Nazis in identifying and arresting the Jews. Only two countries refused to cooperate and as a result, 90% plus of their Jews survived and could be located in 1945.

[Callafangers]

I replied to this. I pointed out that Dresden pyres shows the corpses releasing moisture, with smoke that looks more like steam. I also pointed out the witnesses reported that female corpses burned easier than male, which will be due to the higher fat content. As for how much wood is needed, can you not see the Dresden and Ohrdruf photos? Far less wood is needed than you think, for the pyre to burn and corpses catch fire. Some of the wood on the Ohurdruf pyre is only partially burnt, but the metal rails still bent due to the heat.

This is extraordinary. But not to worry folks, I'm going to remain calm.

Nessie, quantify what you are claiming here. I have. You cannot say "far less wood is needed" as though the laws of physics and the potential energy of wood is somehow different at Dresden or at Reinhardt camps. You have not made a "new discovery" in the field of thermodynamics and biomass.

The rest of your response regarding my carefully cited and scientifically-backed analysis is the same references to your own subjective interpretation of Dresden. This is mind-bogglingly stupid so no need for me to respond further to you, here.

Going by the witness maps, model, descriptions and what geophysics found in the area where five pits were found next to each other, I would estimate the graves took up 80% of the main mass grave area at TII.

You're just as vague as your references are, yet you would say "80%" because, hey, at least that's a big number.

[Nessie]

I replied to this. I pointed out that Dresden pyres shows the corpses releasing moisture, with smoke that looks more like steam. I also pointed out the witnesses reported that female corpses burned easier than male, which will be due to the higher fat content. As for how much wood is needed, can you not see the Dresden and Ohrdruf photos? Far less wood is needed than you think, for the pyre to burn and corpses catch fire. Some of the wood on the Ohurdruf pyre is only partially burnt, but the metal rails still bent due to the heat.

This is extraordinary. But not to worry folks, I'm going to remain calm.

Nessie, quantify what you are claiming here. I have. You cannot say "far less wood is needed" as though the laws of physics and the potential energy of wood is somehow different at Dresden or at Reinhardt camps. You have not made a "new discovery" in the field of thermodynamics and biomass.

The rest of your response regarding my carefully cited and scientifically-backed analysis is the same references to your own subjective interpretation of Dresden. This is mind-bogglingly stupid so no need for me to respond further to you, here.

Are you denying the evidence of the Dresden pyres? Are you claiming they did not work and could not have cremated the corpses on them?

I do not have a subjective interpretation of the pyres. The photos and witness descriptions evidence how they were set and that they reduced the corpses to cremains, that were taken and buried in a grave.

Going by the witness maps, model, descriptions and what geophysics found in the area where five pits were found next to each other, I would estimate the graves took up 80% of the main mass grave area at TII.

You're just as vague as your references are, yet you would say "80%" because, hey, at least that's a big number.

The 80% number is not vague, I have explained how I got it. It is from the evidence of the goephysics that found 5 grave pits in a row, next to the memorial, which fits witness descriptions and drawings, that show graves, with some undisturbed ground between them. For example, the Richard Glazar map;

http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/pic/bmap3.jpg

The yellow graves are in the same areas that yellow graves are indicated by geophysics;

[HansHill]

countless

Know what quantity would be more convincing for your argument? Any quantity at all. The closer to 800,000 the better, in fact.

Saying "countless" does nothing for your argument where you are upholding a fantastical quantity, and that quantity is central to your position. Conversely it is perfectly in line with the Revisionist position, in that we know transports with deceased passengers arrived at these camps, from typhus, starvation, exhaustion and other diseases. "Countless" does not preclude 50, or 500 or 5,000 or 10,000. Its much harder for you to assert 800,000 from "countless" than it is for me to assert two or three orders of magnitude lower than that.

Especially when he says "no mass graves are any longer to be found". Had he found fields of partially cremated human bodies in the order of 800,000 he would not have stated this.

Activists!!