Why did Jankiel Wiernik plagiarize an earlier report?

[Stubble]

Did any of the Wiernik believers come up with a good explanation for the chlorine point which was raised on page two? If so I missed it.

How would he have "corrected" this AFTER he left the camp if we are to pretend his account was based on direct personal experience? He saw the tank engine but due to trauma he temporarily forgot about it but then recovered the memory in time for the 1944 publication?

If I understand the orthodox position on that particular it is 'you can't prove that was Wiernik's hand'.

Unless I'm mistaken Nick made that argument in another thread where this was broached, and of course the 4 finned fellow said much the same.

[bombsaway]

So we are hypocrites because we don't agree with you about some totally unrelated point? How does that make sense?

There's much that has and could be said about euthanasia, but I will refrain here since this is an obvious derail on your part and you are clearly trying to avoid talking about Wiernik. I will take this as an admission that you are struggling to come up with a defense here.

Your story strongly depends on people like Wiernik. If these sources can't be defended, then your story collapses.

I use the same argument you use against the T4 connection - circumstantial evidence

Just because SK Lange's job was rounding up mental patients and killing them, doesn't mean they did the same thing immediately following this duty with Jews when they became SK Chelmno. It's circumstantial evidence.

Just because Wiernik was involved in production of pro communist materials, doesn't mean he fabricated the Treblinka testimony. It's circumstantial evidence (I would say very weak, compared to the SK Lange circumstantial evidence)

in other words, if you're saying the Wiernik stuff is strong evidence of him fabricating the testimony, you should also say the same thing about the SK lange and broader T4 connection. You make no such admission, which is a sign of your hypocrisy, motivated reasoning, delusions, whatever.

It's not the "same argument." They are completely different contexts. "Circumstantial" is just a type of evidence. Circumstantial evidence could be strong or weak in a given instance. Ultimately, people draw conclusions based on all known information, along with various priors, not just one thing. There is no reason whatsoever that disbelieving in Wiernik simultaneously requires one to accept whatever you are trying to argue about Lange. Your Lange argument (which is off-topic) has to stand on its own merits. You keep saying things like "you guys don't bat an eye about X, Y, Z." Why do you think we have ignored this point? We have heard the T4 arguments and we do not find them convincing in light of all the other evidence. The T4 thing in my mind is fine as a prima facie argument. Like, ok, I'm listening. Let's see the rest of your case. Aaaaand the rest of it is guys like Wiernik. Womp, womp. And your 50 Olympic swimming pools of ash turns out to to have like four photos of a few bones to support it. Your T4 thing is simply not good enough given that foundation of your case has been destroyed.

Back on topic. I do not agree with your dismissal of the new Wiernik evidence as circumstantial. We already had good reason to suspect this. The original publisher in America was the "American Representation of the General Jewish Workers' Union of Poland" which is some socialist thing. Plus the style of the 45 page novella is quite sensational and propagandistic. Guards who rip children apart with their bare hands. Asides about the Germans being guilty of the Katyn massacre. This story was that this guy was some random carpenter who spent a death camp for a year and had bullets bouncing off of him during his miraculous escape. The new results confirm, directly, not circumstantially, that he was not some random apolitical carpenter but rather he was involved in producing subversive communist propaganda before the war. To be clear though, Wiernik had already been debunked before this. This just demolishes him even further.

The argument re a group like SK Lange is that they could be involved in killing mental patients but that doesn't mean they killed Jews. My argument re his activities producing pro Soviet propaganda is this doesn't mean he was a Soviet agent or lied with his Treblinka testimony. Even if he you can show he was a Soviet agent this doesn't disprove his Treblinka testimony, in and of itself, much like SK Lange's activities aren't direct evidence. But you can't even show he was a Soviet agent, or even Pro Soviet, rather than having socialist leanings. We know from his biography that he had pro socialist positions, being a member of the Bund movement, which =/= Soviet. This is argument is weak sorry. You may have stronger arguments, like errors in his actualy testimony, but this is a nothing-burger.

So you would say that the SK Lange and broader T4 argument is a strong one, irrespective of the other evidence? Stronger than this Wiernik detail? If so I'll retract my accusation of hypocrisy, that's fair.

[Callafangers]

T4 wasn't a medical operation, quite the opposite, unless by medical treatment one means killing. Nevertheless, which medical professionals were involved with Reinhardt camps / Chelmno? Names please.

Nurses from T-4 going to AR camps (incomplete data, from holocaustresearchproject.org):

Karl Steubl
Paul Bredow
Johannes Eisold
Hermann Felfe
Alfred Forker
Otto Horn
Robert Jurs (also a painter, clerk)
Kurt Seidel
Fritz Zaspel
Johannes Klahan
Konrad Fritz

There was also Max Moller, a nurse who worked for Aktion Reinhardt having never been at T-4. Additionally, more than 1/4th of all AR camp staff were never at T-4.

In addition to nurses, the AR camps also employed numerous cooks and kitchen staff :

Kurt Hubert Franz
Rudolf Bar
Erwin Fichtner
Hans Girtzig
Ferdinand Gromer
August Hengst
Gustav Munzberger
Hanz Zanker
Josef Hirtreiter (also a clerk)

But fascinatingly, the largest category of staff coming over from T4 to AR had shared experience as economic and registration clerks/managers :

Gotlieb Hering
Karl Franz Reichleitner
Gerhardt Borner
Werner Borowski
Erich Dietze
Josef Hirtreiter
Alfred Ittner
Robert Jurs
Friedrich Lorent
Herbert Scharfe
Ernst Schemmel
Hans-Heinz Schutt
Friedrich Tauscher
Arthur Walter

Other former T-4 roles included driver, crematory staff, building maintenance, metalworker, gardener, animal caretaker, etc.

Just how equipped were nurses, cooks, and economic/registry clerks and managers at a place allegedly involving no medical services, minimal cooking, little or no economic operations, and no registrations?



Thank you for hand-delivering another slam-dunk evidence of what really happened at AR camps, bombsaway.

Just to recap:

Overwhelmingly, the jobs and expertise of T4 staff brought to AR camps included the exact sets of job duties we would expect from a non-genocidal role there, perfectly fitting (dare I say, beautifully) the revisionist thesis.

---

[EDIT: I initially overcounted the number of economic/registry staff initially due to an error on my worksheet. The data above is now corrected. My apologies.]

[Nessie]

...

You may already know this, but cataloguing variations in texts and manuscripts is known as textual criticism....

The potential reasons for variations in witness evidence;

- different translators
- more than one statement given at different times, with different questions asked
- different statements provided, years apart, affected by memory
- statements being misquoted, misattributed or conflated.

Wiernik wrote a book, gave a statement to the 1945 Polish Judge led enquiry and gave evidence at two trials. Do not expect him to repeatedly describe what he saw, using the same words, each time.

[Archie]

This is argument is weak sorry. You may have stronger arguments, like errors in his actualy testimony, but this is a nothing-burger.

You would have more credibility with this sort of opinion if there were at least some range in your opinions. Have you ever once admitted that revisionists have any valid points at all? If not (I don't recall any) then such statements from you appear tactical, i.e., I think you would say this no matter how strong the argument was. When I see you start admitting to some difficulties, I might start taking your opinions more seriously. Until then I will discount all such opinions from you.

At any rate, even if this is your real opinion (in which case it's odd that you tried to change the topic), I don't think your thinking here would reflect general attitudes on this. Most people (at least among the minority who are interested in historical controversies) I think would see this new info as significantly damaging Wiernik as a source.

I will also link this thread which I think is relevant here.
https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=116

[Archie]

Did any of the Wiernik believers come up with a good explanation for the chlorine point which was raised on page two? If so I missed it.

How would he have "corrected" this AFTER he left the camp if we are to pretend his account was based on direct personal experience? He saw the tank engine but due to trauma he temporarily forgot about it but then recovered the memory in time for the 1944 publication?

If I understand the orthodox position on that particular it is 'you can't prove that was Wiernik's hand'.

Unless I'm mistaken Nick made that argument in another thread where this was broached, and of course the 4 finned fellow said much the same.

So he thinks some other carpenter escaped Treblinka and wrote striking similar story except with the chlorine blunder? Seems like a stretch. I don't think we are out on a limb in thinking the 1943 version(s) are the rough drafts of the "Wiernik" text.

There's also the similarity to Goldfarb. I think it's very hard to come up with an explanation for all of this that doesn't totally destroy Wiernik as a source. But I'm sure bombsaway will assure us it's all a "nothing burger."

[Stubble]

There is something inexplicable about Goldfarb. I will let Pilgrimofdark explain;

Two methods of homicidal gassing, in the same building, at different times. Novel.

And the nonsense converges!

Goldfarb also mentions the use of chlorine lime in the gas chambers, because the motor could only supply gas to two of the ten chambers.

Goldfarb "remembers" Wiernik and his book, but can't remember his first name correctly, calling him Jacob instead of Jankiel. Wiernik never mentions Goldfarb.

So did the Soviets have an early unpublished version of the Treblinka gas/chlorine chamber story from the Warsaw Jewish/Polish underground?

Was A Year in Treblinka a collaborative writing project between subversives in Warsaw and Soviets?

There was a separate opening in the roof for the gas to escape from the chamber. However, when the gas chamber first began operating, it turned out that the motor couldn't supply enough gas to all 10 chambers. It only supplied the first two.

Then, while the engine was being repaired, another, even more painful, method of killing was used. A significant quantity of chlorine lime* was urgently delivered to the building. A certain amount of chlorine lime was left in a wet state in a chamber, which was hermetically sealed. This process of poisoning the people in the chamber was incomparably longer, and therefore more painful. People were kept in cells for 24 hours, and even then, some sometimes remained alive.

* chlorine lime = хлорной извести
Google translates the complete phrase as "bleach" but each individual word as "chlorine" "lime"

By August 1944, there's cross-contamination between the early unpublished manuscript version of Wiernik's work and Goldfarb's interrogation with the Red Army.

How?

[pilgrimofdark]

There's also the similarity to Goldfarb. I think it's very hard to come up with an explanation for all of this that doesn't totally destroy Wiernik as a source. But I'm sure bombsaway will assure us it's all a "nothing burger."

Goldfarb's full interrogation protocols with the Red Army are online.

Short version: he gives a book report, somehow echoes the unpublished manuscript version of the account attributed to Wiernik, adds his own atrocity hearsay.

The interrogation protocol of Abram Goldfarb, who worked in a team to carry corpses from Treblinka's gas chambers. Kosuvo-Lyatski village, September 21, 1944

In them, Goldfarb claims the following:

• He knew Jacob [sic] Wiernik.
• He knows Jake's book A Year in Treblinka.
• He survived the Treblinka Revolt and lived in the woods in the 1 year between the Treblinka Revolt and the Red Army recapturing the area.

He echoes Wiernik's highly-specific memory of the chlorine gassing with the roof hatch. He also claims chlorinated lime poisoning took all night. But it had to be done because the motor wouldn't work.

However, he noticed that train cars full of Jews had a 100% mortality rate on reaching the camp. Asking the sole survivor, he was told the guards shot "poison gas bullets" into the trains, which then spread to everyone on the train.

Timeline:

June 6, 1944 - first mention of Wiernik's book
August 15, 1944 - Soviet translation of A Year in Treblinka is completed
August 24, 1944 - Soviets refer to it in their "Act of German Crimes in Treblinka Camp"
September 21, 1944 - Goldfarb mentions the book in his interrogation*
December 2011 - Holocaust Controversies mentions Goldfarb over a dozen times in their book, never disclosing Goldfarb's stated prior familiarity with Wiernik's book

Separating witnesses can reduce the likelihood of them reporting information they have not directly observed.

- UK College of Policing

* yes, for some reason, the Soviets wrote their report before interrogating most of the witnesses.