Korherr Report "Decoding" Instruction

[ResearcherGuy]

What do we make of the RSHA decree defining special treatment as execution?

Ich mache nochmals darauf aufmerksam, daß bei der Sonderbehandlung (Exekution) das Augenmerk darauf zu richten ist, daß die hiesige Bevölkerung von diesen Vorgängen keine Kenntnis erhält.

Translation : "I draw attention once again to the fact that during special treatment (execution) care must be taken that the local population remains unaware of these proceedings."

The Koherr Report then uses the same term in connection with 1,449,161 Jews.

Es wurden durchgeschleust durch die Lager im Generalgouvernement 1,274,166 Juden; im Warthegau 145,301 Juden... Sonderbehandlung erhielten 1,449,161 Juden.

Translation : "There were channeled through the camps in the General Government 1,274,166 Jews; in the Warthegau 145,301 Jews... Special treatment was received by 1,449,161 Jews."

Furthermore, Rudolf Brandt requested that the term not be used in conjunction with Jews.

Der Reichsführer-SS wünscht, daß an keiner Stelle von der 'Sonderbehandlung der Juden' gesprochen wird. Es muß vielmehr auf Seite 9 Punkt 4 heißen: 'Transportierung von Juden aus den Ostprovinzen nach dem russischen Osten...

Translation: "The Reichsführer-SS [Himmler] wishes that at no point should 'special treatment of the Jews' be mentioned. Rather, on page 9, point 4, it must state: 'Transportation of Jews from the Eastern provinces to the Russian East...'"

How do we explain this from a revionist perspective?

[Callafangers]

Hi ResearcherGuy, it appears you're in the wrong subforum as I don't think anyone would believe you are here as a revisionist sincerely collaborating toward advancing revisionist research, based on your presentation here, which appears pressing or possibly combative.

In any case, to answer your question ("How do we explain this from a revionist perspective?"):

1. We first look to see if your argument appears sound or meaningful, such as by analyzing each of the claims made and the structure presented in developing inferences and a conclusion, assessing validity.

2. Your first claim is of a "RSHA decree defining special treatment as execution". But you are not specific enough because the decree you're referring to says, "Special treatment takes place by hanging" (and also wasn't referring to Jews). Were 6 million Jews hanged?:

And here is what Heinrich Himmler wrote on February 20, 1942 in a secret order to S.D. and Security Police Officers concerning Eastern workers, once again long before there were Americans or Russians about.

Bekämpfung der Diziplinwidrigkeit
(4) In besonders schweren Fällen ist beim Reichsicherheitshauptamt Sonderbehandlung unter Angabe der Personalien und des genauen Tatbestandes zu beantragen.
(5) Die Sonderbehandlung erfolgt durch den Strang.

[translation]

Combatting adverseness to discipline
(4) In especially serious cases, special treatment is to be applied for from the Reich Main Security Office by transmission of the particulars and the exact facts of the case.
(5) Special treatment takes place by hanging.

Nuremberg Document 3040-PS

https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-his ... ment.shtml

The notion of what "special [anything]" meant was invariably context-dependent, and many examples of this sort of description have been covered by revisionists, see:

Special Treatment in Auschwitz: Origin and Meaning of a Term
https://holocausthandbooks.com/book/spe ... auschwitz/

When accounting for context, there is zero contemporary wartime evidence that "special treatment" applied to racial extermination nor to any barbaric, extreme methods like 'gassing' -- neither of Jews nor anyone else. And there are many innocuous or even medicinal uses of the same or similar terminology, some even applied to Jews.

3. Given a lack of evidence that "special handling" meant "killing and gassing", your shift onto Korherr's language and Himmler's recommendation to modify it actually supports the revisionist position: Himmler here has clarified that "special treatment" of 1.3M Jews actually means sifting/transiting them through the camps in the General Government. The term "special treatment" would have been too vague or unprofessional for a report like this, so he corrects it.

4. Altogether, the notion that "special treatment" necessarily meant killing, whether for Jews or in general, is unsupported. A few isolated instances of such phrasing for certain populations (often just used in passing to make a point of a group being treated specially [whether or not by killing], rather than any official label) does not substantiate 'Holocaust' claims which are so desperate as to rely on extremely vague terminology as 'evidence'.

That's how "we explain this from a revisionist perspective", per your inquiry. If you wish to debate this point, I would suggest moving your topic to the proper subforum ('Holocaust Debate', here: https://www.codohforum.com/viewforum.php?f=3)

[Archie]

Hi, ResearcherGuy. Welcome to the forum.

They assume special-anything refers to murder. Special treatment, special action, special vehicles, etc. Special treatment could mean execution in some cases. It did not exclusively mean execution.

See Holocaust Handbooks volumes #10 and #33 for the most detailed revisionist discussion of this topic. There also should be a Holocaust Encyclopedia entry on this for a quick summary (I'd link it but the site appears to be down right now).

With these sorts of points, I like to ask the other side what exactly they are arguing. Because they don't usually even bother to finish the argument but rather prefer to rely on insinuation. They are connecting a few dots together and making multiple assumptions, and I like to have them specify what those are.

-Here's an example of special treatment referring to execution
-(Let's ignore the examples where it means something else)
-This document says "special treatment."
-Assume this means they were killed.

Another one they do with Korherr is the "camouflage purposes" which is also more of an insinuation than an argument. Who was trying to camouflage what from whom?

Search "Korherr" here on the forum and you will find a lot of prior discussion of this report. Regarding the term special treatment in the document, Korherr uses the term once and says "Total evacuation (including Theresienstadt and special treatment)."

Theresienstadt was the "privileged ghetto" where older Jews were sent (and not killed). It opened on Nov 24, 1941 which is right around when Hitler was supposedly deciding to exterminate the Jews (slightly before according to Gerlach, a little after according to Browning). The Red Cross visited Theresienstadt during the war and gave a relatively favorable report which angered the Jewish groups. It is odd that they opened such a ghetto alongside the rollout of a mass extermination program. The usual explanation they give is that the Nazis set up Theresienstadt as a trick, I guess so people wouldn't notice there was a Holocaust going on. (That explanation itself raises a whole host of questions).

See here for Himmler's explanation of their Jewish policy to Mussolini.
viewtopic.php?p=2147#p2147

He specifically mentions Theresienstadt as being part of the policy.

The oldest Jews were being housed in old people's homes in Berlin, Munich and Vienna. The other old Jews would have been placed in the small town of Theresienstadt, a retirement ghetto for German Jews, where they would continue to receive their pensions and benefits and could live their lives as they wished, although they fought among themselves there in the most lively way.

[ResearcherGuy]

Hi ResearcherGuy, it appears you're in the wrong subforum as I don't think anyone would believe you are here as a revisionist sincerely collaborating toward advancing revisionist research, based on your presentation here, which appears pressing or possibly combative.

That is purely your personal and uninformed inference. I've been arguing with holocaust believers for years, and have been labeled a denialist plenty. I don't know what makes you think such a simple presentation is combative, that is purely your imagination. Don't be so quick to judge others, based off of so little. I like to know best how to hande Holocaustian (that's what I counter label them as) claims, hence why I posted this.

"But you are not specific enough because the decree you're referring to says, "Special treatment takes place by hanging"

Nope, the quote comes from a September 20, 1939, decree issued by the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) shortly after the invasion of Poland.

It translates as follows :

I once again draw attention to the fact that during special treatment (execution), care must be taken to ensure that the local population does not become aware of these proceedings.

I gave you the quote in both German and English, and still you manage to miss that and instead reference something else about Jew hanging, please read carefully.

"Himmler here has clarified that "special treatment" of 1.3M Jews actually means sifting/transiting them through the camps in the General Government. The term "special treatment" would have been too vague or unprofessional for a report like this, so he corrects it."

The point is, why was the term "special treatment" used to describe this to begin with.

[ResearcherGuy]

Hi, ResearcherGuy. Welcome to the forum...

Hello thanks. I guess the main argument is, why was such a vague term "special treatment" used to describe mere transportation? Himmer then made it a point to not use that particular term.

[Archie]

That is purely your personal and uninformed inference. I've been arguing with holocaust believers for years, and have been labeled a denialist plenty. I don't know what makes you think such a simple presentation is combative, that is purely your imagination. Don't be so quick to judge others, based off of so little. I like to know best how to hande Holocaustian (that's what I counter label them as) claims, hence why I posted this.

Where? On X?

In most places, the discussion is not very deep (and often the people who seem informed are fakers who are swiping talking points from AI or some website). Honestly, you are probably wasting your time if you try to give extremely detailed replies in such venues. The "quick" reply for X etc would be to say the term also had non-lethal meanings, and then immediately pivot to points you want to talk about. If someone is serious and really wants more detail, I would point them here and to Holocaust Handbooks, etc.

P.S. The reason many of us look askance at threads like this is that it is common for people to come on here and say, "hey, guys, I'm totally a revisionist but there's just this one little thing that's been bothering me ..." More often than not these people turn out not to be revisionists. I'm not sure why they do this. I guess they think it's clever. It's not that these topics can't be discussed. It's just better if people are upfront about what they actually think.

[Archie]

Hi, ResearcherGuy. Welcome to the forum...

Hello thanks. I guess the main argument is, why was such a vague term "special treatment" used to describe mere transportation? Himmer then made it a point to not use that particular term.

First, let's establish what the argument is that you want us to respond to.

The claim being made is that the phrase special treatment in the Korherr report refers to murder. Okay. How do we know that? Saying they wouldn't have used the term for deportation is not much of argument. Why not?

These are at best circumstantial points.

[Wetzelrad]

Describing this 1939 RSHA decree as a "'decoding' instruction" seems silly. It doesn't label itself that, it doesn't make reference to materials to be decoded. All it does is define "special treatment", apparently in the context of the invasion of Poland.

It doesn't follow that a message written three years later between different parties in a different context and for different targets should be "decoded" to have the same meaning.

Plus, any argument around this tends toward mootness because the Korherr Report that exists still did use "special treatment" shortly below point 4 in reference to point 4. If "special treatment" was actually a codeword/euphemism that needed to be erased, and not merely a vague descriptor that needed to be clarified, then it would not have survived to the final draft.

If anything, it is the message from Brandt/Himmler that was a "decoding instruction".

I guess the main argument is, why was such a vague term "special treatment" used to describe mere transportation? Himmer then made it a point to not use that particular term.

Himmler may have wanted the term removed here to avoid exactly this kind of confusion. "Special treatment" is not a rigidly defined term in any language.

He instead substituted his own definition of the term: "Transportation of the Jews from the Eastern Provinces to the Russian East". This definition makes logical sense and seems to match the term's usage in some other contexts (briefly argued in Sobibor, p.330).

Bear in mind that the Germans' goal was to remove Jews from the Reich. Several terms appearing in the Korherr reports relate to this. These are how they should be defined, as I understand it:
"Emigration" referred to the set of Jews who voluntarily exited the territory.
"Evacuation" referred to those who were forcefully moved into ghettoes and camps.
"Special treatment" referred to the subset of those evacuated who were forced further east.

If this is accurate, then the use of "special treatment" here may have been an attempt to neatly summarize the numbers under a single heading and therefore show how much progress they had made.

[Eye of Zyclone]

I guess the main argument is, why was such a vague term "special treatment" used to describe mere transportation?

Why not? Military jargon often sounds strange to outsiders.

During WW2, all German military vehicles were called "special purpose vehicles" and the anti-typhus delousing of German troops on the Eastern front was reportedly performed by "mobile delousing squads with special vans" (see the link below).


https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=18790#p18790

mere transportation?

Transportation (which was still a deportation, that is, a forced transportation, in cattle cars), plus mass arrest, plus group delousing, plus family separation, plus general detention & re-ghettoization, plus forced labor, during the biggest war ever fought. In other words, something that was unordinary, harsh and large-scale enough to be called a special treatment if I'm asked.

[Eye of Zyclone]

When clarification magically becomes suspect and sinister (AKA "significant," in the misleading innuendoes of Holohoaxers)...




https://postimg.cc/CZxTZYJj

[PrudentRegret]

OP may find it relevant that Richard Korherr himself wrote a letter to Der Spiegel in the 1970s claiming that he had asked what it meant at the time, was told it referred to resettlement, and that's what he believed when he wrote the report. So Korherr is on the record himself as saying his interpretation of those statistics was what Revisionists say they meant.

[Callafangers]

That is purely your personal and uninformed inference. I've been arguing with holocaust believers for years, and have been labeled a denialist plenty. I don't know what makes you think such a simple presentation is combative, that is purely your imagination. Don't be so quick to judge others, based off of so little. I like to know best how to hande Holocaustian (that's what I counter label them as) claims, hence why I posted this.

I might have read into your "tone" a bit more than was necessary. If so, I apologize. As Archie points out, we have dealt with some pretty ridiculous shenaningans here from people pretending to be "curious" and "open-minded" (search the name 'ConfusedJew' here for a prime example).

"But you are not specific enough because the decree you're referring to says, "Special treatment takes place by hanging"

Nope, the quote comes from a September 20, 1939, decree issued by the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office) shortly after the invasion of Poland.

You didn't cite your source, which means I had to guess. I Googled a portion of the original German in your provided excerpt and nothing came up. I found the other which I mentioned, which was also a RSHA decree. Your example is much earlier (1939), making it even less relevant to Jewish policy [allegedly] coming years later.

"Himmler here has clarified that "special treatment" of 1.3M Jews actually means sifting/transiting them through the camps in the General Government. The term "special treatment" would have been too vague or unprofessional for a report like this, so he corrects it."

The point is, why was the term "special treatment" used to describe this to begin with.

The point is, the policy about Jews was controversial however you flip it -- exterminationists and revisionists agree that Germany was engaging in controversial policy regarding Jews, even against international law. Jews were being captured, imprisoned, dispossessed, and removed (ethnically cleansed) entirely from the lands they occupied. Moreover, global propaganda was also using 'Jewish suffering' as a media theme (no one denies many atrocity lies were told). Thus, Germany was not going to be outspoken about Jewish policy in general. Terms like "special treatment" naturally serve the purpose of being especially vague, which is good if you don't want operations known or understood with any detail (or merely to highlight any sort of unusual exception). But such vague terminology is less than ideal for a formal, official report.

Perhaps Himmler's concern was also that a term like "special treatment" could be confused for killing, hence why he recommended it be changed to properly account for these Jews being documented.

Only with Holocaust goggles do we (through our own Hollywood-fueled biases) jump immediately to thinking (or accepting) every vague term or phrase is a Nazi cover-up for 'gassing'... because we all know just how evil those Nazis were. Didn't you see Schindler's List, after all?