Historians v revisionists, methodology.

[Archie]

A history of the Holocaust is not going to include details about methodology, as that is a separate subject.

False. Analysis of sources is common and essential on controversial historical topics. Your idea of "history book" seems to be something like a textbook for school children where everything is smoothed out into a simple narrative/story. Serious history isn't like that.

I have seen revisionists quoting historians who have commented on the credibility of certain witnesses.

Ha. You admit that you have to get it secondhand from revisionists because you DON'T READ THE ACTUAL BOOKS. If you did, you would know that these sorts of critical comments are atypical of the H literature. On the rare occasions when H historians are a little bit honest, revisionists highlight those comments.

[Nessie]

A history of the Holocaust is not going to include details about methodology, as that is a separate subject.

False. Analysis of sources is common and essential on controversial historical topics. Your idea of "history book" seems to be something like a textbook for school children where everything is smoothed out into a simple narrative/story. Serious history isn't like that.

I have seen revisionists quoting historians who have commented on the credibility of certain witnesses.

Ha. You admit that you have to get it secondhand from revisionists because you DON'T READ THE ACTUAL BOOKS. If you did, you would know that these sorts of critical comments are atypical of the H literature. On the rare occasions when H historians are a little bit honest, revisionists highlight those comments.

Wetzelrad said "In all the narrative-aligned Holocaust history books I've read and referenced, I haven't seen a single one make an assessment of that kind. I realize this is one of your favorite talking points, but where is it in the literature?". Then he gave two perfect examples of witnesses historians have assessed, "I would say most of the historians were utterly irresponsible with their witness assessments. Hilberg for example repeatedly cited Hoss and Gerstein."

His issue is not that they were assessed, as he admits they have been, so contradicting his claim he has not seen a single assessment. His issue is that he thinks they were assessed inaccurately. This thread and much of what I post about on this forum, is why do revisionists think that and how is their methodology better than the one used by historians (and journalists, the police, lawyers or other investigators)?

Historians, as you known, have assessed Hoess and Gerstein and found that their main claims are corroborated, therefore they are being truthful, gassings did happen. But, there are issues over their credibility, accuracy and reliability. Even Wikipedia acknowledges that;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gers ... 9_analysis

"In 1999, historian Christopher Browning, serving as an expert witness for the defense in the libel case brought by David Irving against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, assessed Gerstein’s testimony in detail. Browning concluded that while several aspects of Gerstein’s account contained exaggerations or inaccuracies—particularly regarding statements attributed to Globocnik and figures outside Gerstein’s direct observation..."

In this article, Prof John Zimmerman discusses the reliability of Hoess;

https://web.archive.org/web/20120505135 ... s-memoirs/

"One of the issues that has arisen in connection with the Holocaust is the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Holocaust deniers are forever attacking eyewitnesses as liars or people prone to exaggeration. There can be no doubt that not all eyewitness testimony is reliable. Also, it is true that some witnesses lie or exaggerate.
The main problem with such testimony, however, is that there will often be inconsistencies with regard to details. This is not unusual."

That must by now sound familiar to you, as it is something I regularly state. Zimmerman quotes another Holocaust historian, Lucy Dawidowicz;

"Many thousands of oral histories by survivors recounting their experiences exist in countries and archives around the world. Their quality and usefulness vary significantly according to the informant's memory, grasp of events, insights and of course accuracy. The longer the time lapsed [between the event and the testimony] the less likely the informant has retained freshness of recollection. The transcribed testimonies I have examined have been full of errors in dates, names of participants, and places, and there are evident misunderstandings of the events themselves."

With no difficulty at all, I have found examples of three Holocaust historians discussing the issues around assessing witnesses. The reason why you are attacking my supposedly lack of reading, is because it distracts from your inability to describe and defend the methodology you use to assess witnesses accurately.

[Wetzelrad]

Holocaust historians have gathered the evidence left behind by the Nazis to determine the narrative of what took place [...]

No, they haven't. The historians only came in after the Soviet show trials, after the camps had been ransacked and their guards killed, and after the IMT had made a joke of international law. The historians then took the evidence produced by the Allies and the narrative produced in large part by propagandist authors, and they gave it a seal of legitimacy. This is evident from the fact that Hilberg's history was basically the same as the IMT indictment, which was basically the same as what the newspapers and resistance fighters wrote while the war was still ongoing.

The idea that any historian approached this independently or relied primarily on evidence that they "gathered" themselves is wrong and dishonest.

Their opinion has had little to do with the narrative.

Who would ever believe this? Do Holocaust historians choose to write about the Holocaust just out of purely academic interest? When so many of them uncritically cited the Soviet claim of 4 million dead at Auschwitz, you think that's because they're unbiased robots?

The historian's methodology is evidence based and designed to produce a history of events and reach a proven conclusion. They assess witnesses using the studies of memory, recall and estimation and corroboration.

Totally ridiculous. In all the narrative-aligned Holocaust history books I've read and referenced, I haven't seen a single one make an assessment of that kind. I realize this is one of your favorite talking points, but where is it in the literature? Which historians have you seen cite a study about memory, estimation, or corroboration?

A history of the Holocaust is not going to include details about methodology, as that is a separate subject. I have seen revisionists quoting historians who have commented on the credibility of certain witnesses. Historians tend not to use certain witnesses [...]

Therefore your statement above was false. It does not actually describe any historian. It's just something you made up to defend them.

Kurt Gerstein is another who is widely acknowledged by historians to have credibility issues. That is because their recollection of events is not considered to be that accurate, or reliable.

What you then fail to take into account, is that Hoess and Gerstein are corroborated.

Oh, brother.

Putting aside most of this, my point is that Hilberg cited Gerstein repeatedly but did nothing to note those credibility issues. Is it not maybe relevant to inform the innocent reader that Gerstein claimed 25 million were killed in camps alone? Or some summary words to that effect? Why didn't he?

Has the witness got a reason to lie? Why would Gerstein lie about gassings? What would his motive be and can that motive be proved?

Yes, and not only for the usual reasons of wanting favorable treatment from prosecutors. You should read A Spy For God by Pierre Joffroy. In conversation with Baron Goran von Otter in 1942, Gerstein claimed he joined the SS to investigate the Nazis, and he presented his idea on how to bring down Hitler:

Gerstein's idea was that the Allied air forces, acting on Swedish information, should drop millions of leaflets into Germany, telling the German people what was going on, so that then they would rebel against Hitler.

A witness who claimed to have been an anti-Nazi infiltrator should be properly understood by historians to have cause to lie against the Nazis. He especially demonstrated this motive in suggesting the distribution of propaganda leaflets carrying his invented gassing story. Gerstein also had a long history of anti-Nazi offences prior to the war, which includes spreading propaganda and treason. Despite all this, historians did and still do take his confessions very seriously.

Revisionists take witness claims about the gas chambers, over how many people fitted inside, what gas was used, how long the process took and the limited information we have about the ventilation and declare the gas chambers were a physical impossibility, the witnesses lied. They ignore the evidenced fact that the Nazis did build and operate numerous gas chambers for delousing clothing, so it stands to reason they could build one that could be used to kill people.

Don't let me/us discourage you from making this argument. I suspect it is very helpful in persuading neutral observers.

I have just defenced Gerstein as a witness and explained that he is corroborated and that he is not reliable or credible on the details, as he made mistakes. I can do the same with any other witness you care to name.

Well, I'm not going to name more witnesses here, but you're welcome to do that where appropriate.

I do take amusement from your dual-sided approach to Gerstein. In the world outside the Holocaust, all people agree that mass killing of innocents is an abominable crime, and an accusation thereof is not to be made lightly. Were such an accusation to be made, the greatest skepticism and doubt would be applied not to minor details but to the act of killing itself. Where minor details are found to be wrong, it would only tend to support that the major claim is also wrong. If the accuser majorly erred in describing the murder weapon, the number of dead, and other parts of his story, third parties would naturally accuse him of being a liar. This is an assessment you can make of Gerstein even without any consideration of his person.

For strange reasons you choose to say the accuser is wrong in all these provable ways but still truthful about the part of his story that is the least likely to be true and most deserving of skepticism. He is "corroborated"? I would say that he discredits his corroborators.

[Wetzelrad]

With no difficulty at all, I have found examples of three Holocaust historians discussing the issues around assessing witnesses. The reason why you are attacking my supposedly lack of reading, is because it distracts from your inability to describe and defend the methodology you use to assess witnesses accurately.

I have to agree with Archie. All three of these were historians writing in response to the witness assessments of revisionists (called "deniers"), because revisionists had rightly pointed out that they were negligent in this respect. You can also add Hilberg, who agreed that Gerstein was a "madman", but only in response to cross examination by Zundel's lawyer, some 24 years after his book was first published.

As above, what you are saying and quoting is post-hoc justification for bad history, and none of these historians have used "studies" like you claim.