Majdanek this and that

[Fred Ziffel]

As you all know in the Cell 14 control room there are two tanks engraved with CO2,

See attached
This is a current sign inside Cell 14 I finally was able to get a clear shot of. Yes, I know it is a bit foggy. But is readable.
This is the museum giving a little information on the tanks. And they admit in writing the tanks there now were not the actual tanks used to gas people with CO in the 1940s.

"one of the camp warehouses" is B52. The same building where the Zyklon B unused cans were also found
They state the (5) murder weapons were shipped off to the Soviet Union never to be seen again. The last gassing was early Sept 1943 and yet the Germans keep the murder weapons in a warehouse nearby for the Soviets to discover 10.5 months later.

[Wetzelrad]

QUESTION: Name the persons GUILTY of the atrocities in the Lublin camp?

ANSWER: I know of some of the camp's organizers: [...] Standarten[führer] KOCH, the former camp commander in Buchenwald; [...] It's interesting to note that in 1943, it became known that a number of the camp's organizers had built up their houses. It was said that the reason was the discovery of a massive theft by these individuals—valuables and things concentrated in the camp. In 1942, (...) there was a secret trial of those responsible for the theft. The defendants, according to rumors, were given the opportunity to shoot themselves.

This must be referring to Karl-Otto Koch, who was indeed commandant at Buchenwald. And there was indeed a trial against him.

However, that trial was in 1943-1944, not 1942. And it was not a secret trial but a matter of some public controversy; the prosecution of a high-ranking SS officer was criticized by many. And it was not for crimes committed in Majdanek but in Buchenwald. And it did not involve these other named perpetrators, as far as I can tell.

This witness (Hans Wolters) must have either muddled his own memory of events, or else he was merely regurgitating news reports he was given, but he also muddled that. Or perhaps the person who typed this paper misrepresented his testimony by mixing and matching parts of it. False in any case.

The arrested KUPSTAS J.I., speaking about his service in the German SS troops at the Lublin Death Camp, confessed during interrogation:

I served only one year as a private in the SS battalion at the Lublin Death Camp. Our battalion was tasked with guarding the camp and bringing its inmates to work.
The "Death Camp" was located one and a half kilometers from Lublin. The camp grounds contained over 20 large barracks. It should be noted that the camp was constantly expanding.
The Death Camp held people of various nationalities, brought by the Germans from the countries they occupied during various wars.

Can anyone believe that this was a real confession? This witness repeatedly uses the term "death camp". This language obviously comes from the Soviets themselves.

Both of the witnesses in this report (Kupstas Jaronim Iosifovich and Merkevichas Vladimir Kazimirovich) are said to be ex-Red Army. They were working for the Soviets just three years prior. Can they be taken seriously?

While serving in the SS battalion at the Lublin Death Camp, I took direct part in the brutal extermination of the population held in that camp. Together with other soldiers from our battalion, I repeatedly conscripted groups of Jews held in the camp we guarded into work. I personally beat the Jews who were physically weak and unable to work with the butt of the rifle I had.
In August 1942, under the leadership of lieutenant RACHKUS, I, along with eleven soldiers from our battalion, took direct part in the execution of 90 Jews.
In the month of May 1942, a large group of Jews from the camp were forced to work digging a pit. While working, four Jews, attempting to escape from the death camp, hid under a barracks. However, they were discovered by the Germans and subjected to a brutal beating. Three other soldiers from our battalion and I then executed them. Two weeks later, on the orders of a German officer, I, along with other soldiers from the SS battalion, executed eight Jews for refusing to work.

Here Kupstas got in to some semi-specific incidents, but he missed the obvious. What about the tens to hundreds of thousands gassed, shot, hanged, given lethal injections, roasted alive, and so on? He didn't see any of it? The biggest incident mentioned is a shooting execution of 90 Jews, which if true could well be a legal execution. If that's the worst atrocity he could testify to, it tends to disprove extermination.

However he claimed to be there "only one year", which Holocaust Narrative adherents might argue predated the larger extermination events. In which case his testimony is worth very little to them, but perhaps worth more for us. He described what he saw as "extermination", but if the most he witnessed was ~101 shooting executions, plus beatings in one case, plus "an unbearable regime", then it paints a very different picture of that word than what is commonly understood. Most people would not say 101 executions and compulsory labor is an extermination.

These are in any case self-serving statements. Made for the benefit of himself and the Soviets, not for the Germans.

The rest of the quotations, if they are even real quotes, are overly convenient. They're always worded unnaturally, as if written by the accusers. And they're always vague ("various methods and techniques") so as to prevent their being probed and disproven. Broad admissions to "torture" and "extermination" with only minimal personal blame. Even for theft, no specific stolen object or number thereof was mentioned.

It would be interesting to know the fates of these three witnesses. Nothing about them comes up in a cursory websearch.

[pilgrimofdark]

I should have thought to put the Cyrillic versions of these Lithuanian names. Google/DeepL seem to translate them inconsistently sometimes.

• КУПСТАС Яроним Иосифович
• МЕРКЕВИЧАС Владимир Казимирович

The rest of the quotations, if they are even real quotes, are overly convenient. They're always worded unnaturally, as if written by the accusers.

Marian Sanders, in the dissertation Extraordinary crimes in Ukraine, makes the same point.

The Extraordinary State Commission interrogations are almost sterilized. Everything other than biographical details, class details, and relevant testimony has been excised (or never recorded or entirely nonexistent). Witnesses never stray off topic, never say anything extraneous to the subject at hand.

Reading them, you can almost feel the gun at the back of their heads as they told the NKVD/SMERSH interrogators whatever they thought they wanted to hear.

So it's unclear how much of these "interrogation protocols" are the actual words of those interviewed, how much has been cut out, and how much the interrogators have simply made up.

The SMERSH documents from Majdanek, Treblinka, and Auschwitz all follow the same pattern as each other, and as ESC/ChGK documents.

What about the tens to hundreds of thousands gassed, shot, hanged, given lethal injections, roasted alive, and so on? He didn't see any of it? The biggest incident mentioned is a shooting execution of 90 Jews, which if true could well be a legal execution. If that's the worst atrocity he could testify to, it tends to disprove extermination.

SMERSH seemed to have no clear idea what it was supposed to be having the guards confess to at Majdanek or Treblinka.

[Wetzelrad]

"one of the camp warehouses" is B52. The same building where the Zyklon B unused cans were also found
They state the (5) murder weapons were shipped off to the Soviet Union never to be seen again. The last gassing was early Sept 1943 and yet the Germans keep the murder weapons in a warehouse nearby for the Soviets to discover 10.5 months later.

I feel revisionist literature is somewhat behind on this, now. What is the charitable explanation for why carbon monoxide bottles would be found in Majdanek? Granted, B52 was as big as any other barrack, so it may have stored a great many things, and it was situated in the middle of a number of workshops and other things, so it is actually quite plausible that CO would have had a mundane purpose. But I don't know what purpose that would be.

One manufacturing use for CO is (and was) dyemaking. Some sources (in spoiler) say Bliżyn had a dyemaking factory, and this eventually became a subcamp of Majdanek. It seems possible then that these empty CO tanks were transferred from Bliżyn.

Spoiler

This Jewish heritage website describes Bliżyn as "a Nazi slave labor camp run in a dye factory".
https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/b/1430-b ... amp-blizyn

Abraham Weltman gave a description of his time in Bliżyn where his work was "painting uniforms". This is different from producing the dye, but understandably related.
https://californiarevealed.org/do/1a031 ... 4e8159af14

An SS memo from 1944 briefly discussed the turnover of Blizyn to KL Lublin. "Textile factories" are mentioned. Dye is not.
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/717323
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/717333

Probably it would be helpful to learn about the manufacturer, to whom the name on the bottle must belong: Schönerwein and Brenen. I can't find anything about it.

[pilgrimofdark]

Probably it would be helpful to learn about the manufacturer, to whom the name on the bottle must belong: Schönerwein and Brenen. I can't find anything about it.

That could be a German > Russian > German corruption.

I don't think we have access to that exact GARF document that Graf & Mattogno reference to get the Cyrillic characters.

But there's something similar in the Majdanek Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission documents linked earlier.

На них имеются специальные штемпеля: «“Коллен Охсит”, наполнены при 150 атмосферах 8/VIII-1942 г.,Ценнервайн Бремен Берлин.

These cylinders bore specific stamps: "'Kollen Ohsit,' filled at 150 atmospheres, 8/VIII/1942; Zennerwein, Bremen–Berlin."

- Protocol No. 3. Lublin, August 22, 1944 (Link)

DeepL translates it as "Zenerwein Bremen Berlin." I also got "Zennenwein Bremen Berlin" from an LLM. Firefox's terrible translator got "Centralwein" or "Centralnwein."

Are there any photos of that stamp on the bottles?

The "Kollen Ohsit" must be the "Kohlenoxyd" seen on the photos of the bottles here that Fred posted a while ago:

Spoiler

[Fred Ziffel]

Just words from the Russians about the bottles.
I figure if they were indeed the murder weapon, they would at least document each bottle engraving with photos
There is one photo, but it cannot be verified it really came from the Majdanek camp nor is the engraving on the bottles legible

[Wetzelrad]

I see. I had missed that Mattogno did write something about this:

On the alleged gassings with carbon monoxide, Kranz has this to say (p. 233):

“[...] They bore the inscription ‘Kohlenmonoxid. Bei 150 Atmosphären abgefüllt. 8. 7. 42, Żeberwajn und Brenen. Berlin B. 9. Getestet bei 225 Atmosphären. Leergewicht 75,8 kg. Volumen 40,6 Liter’ [...]”

In a footnote, Kranz adds that the address was to be read as “Jennerwein und Brenner”; the names used here were allegedly pseudonyms for Victor Brack and Werner Blankenburg (footnote 15 on p. 223).

https://archive.org/details/holocaust-h ... 5/mode/1up

Which he then casts some doubt on. It seems everyone who has written about this problem worked from the original Soviet report which, if Kranz is correct, misspelled the names. So there is no extant bottle, label/inscription, nor photo of it, just a misspelling of it? Hard to believe.

Oddly, very little has been written about this. One of the very few historians who's mentioned these supposed labels, Eugen Kogon, wrote as if bottles of this kind were common across German territory, and that "those that still existed at the end of the war were bought back by IG Farben." No citation. If this is true, it's remarkable that none of the Allies had the sense to preserve or photograph the label on any of these bottles. Or evidence of the buyback or anything else.

But it's equally odd that the names on the bottles were roughly coincident to these T4 codenames. I have to hedge and say that I wouldn't be surprised if exterminationists turn out to be right on this aspect.

Currently I can't find any obvious corroboration for a company existing with a name like that -- but if the name was misspelled it could have any number of variants, which makes it difficult searching.

[Fred Ziffel]

Note only not document with photos, they disappeared them into the Soviet Union
They could have paraded them through the streets of Lublin
I have shown in August 1944 photos of the Soviets sitting at a table with a can of Zyklon B on the table questioning Germans about the Zyklon and activities going on inside the camp but no bottle of CO gas in sight

[Fred Ziffel]

Here is my work on Majdanek for viewing on Odysee for those interested
Snipping Tool on Win 10 and you can take a copy of whatever you find useful

Link: https://odysee.com/@Ziffel2923:e/MajdanekV10:3

[Fred Ziffel]

I am posting this to get it out there in regard to the new signage in Room 14 and other info for those interested in Majdanek
The new sign was posted between late 2024 and early 2025.
It never fails that just after an update to the presentation, something interesting pops up

[Fred Ziffel]

I recommend to you all this which seemingly could be a series put out by the Majdanek Museum where they will give education on photos taken at Majdanek. It is subtitled in English
pretty good stuff

[Wetzelrad]

Interesting to see some photo analysis from those guys, but it's odd that he (Tarkowski) doesn't have any analysis about the gas chambers themselves, central in the photo.

In discussing roadbuilding, he claims that the rail tracks ran behind the gas chambers to a point where limestone was gathered. He drew in the tracks as a yellow line on the image below. This is based on a plan from 1942 and may well have been true at one point. However, all the photos he shares show that where the tracks should have run straight, they actually and unmistakably took a left turn, going in fact between the gas chamber and the guard tower, and proceeding down the lane of barracks. I've added this as a translucent magenta line.

roadbuilding.jpg (209.98 KiB) Viewed 105 times

Where plans and photos diverge, I generally assume photos are more accurate. Tarkowski does not remark on this discrepancy at all. Perhaps that is because he prefers to use the 1942 plan to support this speculative theory of his:

Prisoners are most likely carrying earth to build embankments in areas designated for burning corpses.

According to Tarkowski, the area limestone was being picked up was also the place where earth embankments were built for later outdoor cremations. I'm not so familiar with this claim, but it strikes me as totally unevidenced based on what he shows in the video, besides being contradictory to the photos. Dirt cannot be brought on tracks to a place that the tracks did not go!

Tarkowski also adds that this roadbuilding is documented to have taken place in the "second half of April 1943" and that the earthen ramparts were in this photo "not completed" (IMO not even visible). This pushes the date of these alleged outdoor cremations to some time later. Therefore there was no where to cremate the victims of the gas chambers for a period of some months.

[Fred Ziffel]

A photo taken April 1943 at the time period that the alleged gassings were taking place at Majdanek

Yes there was a railroad going down the main drag from B41 as can be seen by this photo

I would wager that the burn pit was for garbage to promote hygiene, not bodies. Stuff being brought into the camp by inmates passed the area of B41 and B42. There would be rat problems there also

those veggies were for the inmates also. to take a line from a famous very Jewish movie the 10 Commandments
I state it this way: Camps are made with men mein fuhrer. The strong make many, the starving make few, the dead make none. I rest my case

Perhaps the SS horses pulled those concrete rollers in front of B41? Now it has been established there were horses at this camp.

Watch from 2:20:

[Fred Ziffel]

Here is another one of those Majdanek observations.

Out near the cremation facility there is the flying saucer monument. Inside the monument there is a big mound of what is said are human remains on display. The flying saucer was built in 1969. And before that, the human remains were located outside in the open air as can be seen in the attached photo. Once the flying saucer was completed, the human remains were moved to the center of it with a roof over head.

Take a look at the mound of ash photo before the mound was moved, focus on the left photo. What do you see?
Look at all the vegetation growing quite lush from the mound. Now read the article on cremated human remains and if they are a good fertilizer for plant life. What does it say? Seems quite negative as a good fertilizer for plant life, yet we can see thick vegetation growing from the old mound.

Considering these two bits of evidence, I get the impression of what we are really looking at is a big pile of mostly dirt instead. Dirt from the nearby trenches that were never filled in.
You can see erosion on the new mound of dirt. If those were really human remains, would that happen?

Pope JP2 prayed at the pile of dirt, I will leave a photo for those interested in next posting

[Fred Ziffel]

Pope JP2 praying to the dirt pile