Historians v revisionists, methodology.

[Keen]

To prove the witnesses lied, requires evidence

Or, a lack of evidence that would have to be present at the alleged crime scene if the alleged "witness" was not lying.

If the physical evidence for an alleged crime that - HAS TO EXIST - for the crime to have

actually happened - DOES NOT EXIST - then the alleged crime obviously - DID NOT HAPPEN.

Ergo: The orthodox “pure extermination center” story is - A PROVEN, NONSENSICAL BIG-LIE.

[Archie]

We see from this Gerstein exchange how monumentally incompetent Nessie is as a researcher.

I asked him to comment on the use of the Gerstein statement at the IMT/NMT. This is an extremely famous document, and I gave him the document number. He was unable to find the statement. And he got confused because a Zyklon B invoice was bundled with the Gerstein document at the IMT.

I then gave him some additional quotes from the NMT Case I (Green Series) and from Poliakov's book. For Poliakov, I gave him the author, title, and page number.

This same negligence (even unscrupulousness) is evident in the early treatment of Gerstein in the Holocaust literature. French historian Leon Poliakov in his 1951 booked cited Gerstein approvingly as a major witness.

The victims are no longer here to testify; the butchers, too, have either died or gone underground. Among the very few statements that we have on the operations of these camps is one from Kurt Gerstein, a chemical engineer who was a tragic hero in the German anti-Nazi resistance. His account was written down directly in an uncertain French; we have basically retained its original style. (Harvest of Hate, pg. 192)

He then dedicates to a long quote of the statement. We know Poliakov actually did notice some errors in the statement because he makes undisclosed changes to the statement without any discussion or explanation. For example Gerstein's description has 700-800 people in a gas chamber of only 25 sq meters. Poliakov arbitrarily increases the room to 93 sq meters without comment, i.e., he falsifies the text to hide Gerstein's error from the reader.

Critical comments about Gerstein from the orthodox side generally came very late and only AFTER revisionists had already debunked him.

Nessie then complained that I "failed to provide a link" to an extremely famous statement he should already be familiar with.

He also requested a link to the NMT 1 Green Series. Again, this is something he should be familiar with. If he were new, I would cut him some slack. But he's been doing this for like 15 years and (as is clear from this thread) fancies himself an expert on historical method.

Then he complains that I didn't give him a reference for Poliakov when I clearly had several posts before.

I then spoon-feed him.

You need to learn how to do basic research. How are you not familiar with the Gerstein statement after 15 years of doing this?

Butz reproduces it here:
https://www.unz.com/book/arthur_r_butz_ ... _79_1:1-31

Here is the Poliakov book I cited. Check it. He says 93 square meters.
https://archive.org/details/harvestofhatenaz00poli

See Roques for a detailed discussion of the textual variations, including Poliakov's inaccuracies.
https://holocausthandbooks.com/book/the ... -gerstein/

Then he claims my references were "vague" when they were not. And even if I hadn't given him the full info, it should have taken him about 10 seconds to find it if he had any brains.

And then he complains yet again that he still can't find where Poliakov changed the gas chamber dimensions. Even though he has been linked to the book and has been referred to Roques's book which contains a detailed discussion of all the textual variations in the statement.

It is astounding that this incompetent boob who lacks even undergraduate level research skills thinks he is qualified to opine on historical "methodology."

[Archie]

According to Roques (HH54), Rothfels published a German edition of the statement in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte in 1953. That link appears to be a reprint/translation. It was one of the earlier versions that was published. According to Roques, Rothfels (who appears to have been a serious military historian) was much more competent than Poliakov, but the latter is more reflective of the usual level of rigor in "Holocaust studies."

Wikipedia's summary is actually pretty good in explaining how most historians relied on Gerstein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Gers ... 9_analysis

Fair enough. So Rothfels at least actually did lay some skepticism on Gerstein before any revisionist hit the scene. A credit to him. I think it might even be fair to give the earliest historians some leeway because they didn't know how everything would unfold. Today, with the amount of impeaching material that has accumulated, it's less excusable.

One thing I'm curious about is how the problem of historians changing Gerstein's "25 square meters" was ultimately resolved. Mattogno wrote here that different historians came up with different falsifications to improve this aspect of Gerstein's testimony. My experience tells me this could be because the historians felt it was a typo, a misinterpretation, or something like that. Did any sensible explanation of that kind ever arise? Did Poliakov ever explain himself? Or did they simply falsify Gerstein's testimony and walk away? Wikipedia handwaves the issue. Perhaps Nessie can explain it.

My sense is that in Germany the scholarship was generally better quality because they had professional scholars doing it earlier than the US and UK. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the journal for the Institut für Zeitgeschichte which was set up after the war to handle (police) Third Reich history. Martin Broszat is another historian from the institute, and he was the one who walked back the Dachau gas chamber in 1960. So I think it's fair to say there was a bit more rigor among the German historians. The "functionalist" interpretations also seem to have originated with the Germans in the 1970s.

In France, Poliakov I think was very much an activist (almost all of his work was about antisemitism and the Holocaust). Hilberg was very thorough in some ways (he certainly knew the Nuremberg documents very well) but he is actually very bad at handling witness statements. Reitlinger is an interesting case because he is more critical is his book than one would expect but not in a very systematic way. In America, it seems Holocaust history got more professionalized in the late 1970s with people like Browning. And Browning seems to have been influenced a lot by the German historians.

[Nessie]

I have yet to see evidence Gerstein's claim about a 25m square gas chamber, has been falsified. Where is a link to this quote attributed to Gerstein, that changes his description of 25 m2 to something else?

You being unwilling to even check the sources you've already been linked to is not my problem.

I had to ask Archie to provide sources, which he reluctantly conceded to, and then I quoted from those sources.

Roques gave this helpful summary of the changes historians made (from p.165):

700 to 800 persons standing on 25 m², in 45 m³, is a constant feature of the “confessions.” There are many non-revisionist authors who have changed either the surface area, or the number of persons, and omitted the cubic volume. The following list is not exhaustive: Léon Poliakov replaced the 25 m² by 93 m², and eliminated on two occasions the 45 m³ (op. cit. 1951, 1960, 1979, p. 223; 1974, p. 294; Le Monde Juif, 1964, p. 9); he does not say they are standing. Saul Friedländer (op. cit., p. 106) and Francois Delpech (Hist. et Geo. 1979, p. 630) have copied Léon Poliakov. Gideon Hausner realistically rounds off at 100 m² the surface area given by Léon Poliakov (Just. Jerus., French translation, p. 228). Lucy S. Dawidowicz writes that each Jew had “one square foot,” which would give 67.5 m² for 750 persons (War against the Jews, p. 148). The French translation of the book suggests 30 cm² (!) per person (op. cit., p. 240). Robert Neumann respects the m² and the m³; but he brings down the number of victims from 700/800 to 170/180, repeating the discrepancy some lines further on by writing “the people are living… four times 175 persons in four times 45 m³” (Hitler: Aufst. u. Unterg., p. 192).

I would add that Martin Gilbert also falsified this passage, in one case quoting "about a hundred square meters" and in another "ninety-three square meters".

Anything else is likely paraphrasing on behalf of the author, or, since Gerstein gave more than one statement, a different version of his description, or there are different translations.

You suggest these changes are not falsifications but actually paraphrasing. This is ridiculous. Most of the above were given as direct quotes. If any of them was an indirect quote, the numerical change is too big to qualify as a proper paraphrase.

All the historians record that Gerstein spoke of witnessing people being crammed into gas chambers. The alterations are not that significant.

You suggest these changes could be a different version of Gerstein's same story. This sounds possible, but where did Gerstein use "93"?

You accept that historians will use each other as sources. If one makes an error, that then gets repeated. With the different statements from Gerstein and the different reports about what he said, discrepancies will arise. You would need to ask the author of the "93" claim where he got it from.

Roques found that, of the eight primary source versions of Gerstein's story that he was able to find, all of seven used "25", while the eighth merely excluded this passage. Moreover, I can't see where any of the historians tried forwarding this explanation, so it would be a purely novel claim to make and not backed by any evidence.

You do not normally worry about a lack of evidence, such as your lack of evidence Gerstein lied and there were no gas chambers. All you have done, is find discrepancies about details, but not the main event, and suggest that is evidence of lying and a hoax. Suggestion is all you have and one thing Holocaust revisionists have in common is suggestibility.

[Nessie]

We see from this Gerstein exchange how monumentally incompetent Nessie is as a researcher.

A reminder of the forum rule "Sourcing: Formal citations are not required, but, as a basic courtesy, you are encouraged to put in some effort to source your posts, and you should be ready to supply references upon request." My request was that you comply with your own rule.

I asked him to comment on the use of the Gerstein statement at the IMT/NMT. This is an extremely famous document, and I gave him the document number. He was unable to find the statement. And he got confused because a Zyklon B invoice was bundled with the Gerstein document at the IMT.

I asked for clarification, when I found the reference number did not refer to the statement. You got upset, that I was asking you to comply with your own forum rule. Will you be changing that rule, so that when I refer to a document, you have to find it?

I then gave him some additional quotes from the NMT Case I (Green Series) and from Poliakov's book. For Poliakov, I gave him the author, title, and page number.

This same negligence (even unscrupulousness) is evident in the early treatment of Gerstein in the Holocaust literature. French historian Leon Poliakov in his 1951 booked cited Gerstein approvingly as a major witness.

The victims are no longer here to testify; the butchers, too, have either died or gone underground. Among the very few statements that we have on the operations of these camps is one from Kurt Gerstein, a chemical engineer who was a tragic hero in the German anti-Nazi resistance. His account was written down directly in an uncertain French; we have basically retained its original style. (Harvest of Hate, pg. 192)

He then dedicates to a long quote of the statement. We know Poliakov actually did notice some errors in the statement because he makes undisclosed changes to the statement without any discussion or explanation. For example Gerstein's description has 700-800 people in a gas chamber of only 25 sq meters. Poliakov arbitrarily increases the room to 93 sq meters without comment, i.e., he falsifies the text to hide Gerstein's error from the reader.

Critical comments about Gerstein from the orthodox side generally came very late and only AFTER revisionists had already debunked him.

Nessie then complained that I "failed to provide a link" to an extremely famous statement he should already be familiar with.

He also requested a link to the NMT 1 Green Series. Again, this is something he should be familiar with. If he were new, I would cut him some slack. But he's been doing this for like 15 years and (as is clear from this thread) fancies himself an expert on historical method.

Then he complains that I didn't give him a reference for Poliakov when I clearly had several posts before.

I then spoon-feed him.

You need to learn how to do basic research. How are you not familiar with the Gerstein statement after 15 years of doing this?

Butz reproduces it here:
https://www.unz.com/book/arthur_r_butz_ ... _79_1:1-31

Here is the Poliakov book I cited. Check it. He says 93 square meters.
https://archive.org/details/harvestofhatenaz00poli

See Roques for a detailed discussion of the textual variations, including Poliakov's inaccuracies.
https://holocausthandbooks.com/book/the ... -gerstein/

Then he claims my references were "vague" when they were not. And even if I hadn't given him the full info, it should have taken him about 10 seconds to find it if he had any brains.

Is this the new standard for the forum? If I make a claim someone said something, do I only have to provide a link and you then need to search for the quote?

And then he complains yet again that he still can't find where Poliakov changed the gas chamber dimensions. Even though he has been linked to the book and has been referred to Roques's book which contains a detailed discussion of all the textual variations in the statement.

You refused to quote Poliakov, showing he took Gerstein's quote about 25m2 and changed that to 93m2.

It is astounding that this incompetent boob who lacks even undergraduate level research skills thinks he is qualified to opine on historical "methodology."

I asked you to comply with forum rules and stopped looking for the document, out of principle, to force you to provide it. Your whining is to distract from your inability to defend your own methodology.

Gerstein has been assessed by historians as accurate about the main event, the use of gas chambers, because that claim is corroborated by multiple sources of evidence that are independent of him. He is then assessed as unreliable, not credible on the details, because he makes claims that are not physically possible and some of his descriptions are contradicted by other evidence.

You are unable to concisely summarise the revisionist methodology and instead conclude Gerstein lied, without even believing you need to provide any evidence.

[Nessie]

... Hilberg was very thorough in some ways (he certainly knew the Nuremberg documents very well) but he is actually very bad at handling witness statements...

In what way? How do you think it should be done?

[pilgrimofdark]

A reminder of the forum rule "Sourcing: Formal citations are not required, but, as a basic courtesy, you are encouraged to put in some effort to source your posts, and you should be ready to supply references upon request." My request was that you comply with your own rule.

Is this the new standard for the forum? If I make a claim someone said something, do I only have to provide a link and you then need to search for the quote?

That would be a real step up from Nessie refusing to provide links at all or suggesting other people do Google searches to check the sources he bases "his claims" on.

If it's the new standard for the forum, it's one Nessie helped establish.

My claim is in relation to the witnesses who worked at TII. List of witnesses to TII here;

viewtopic.php?t=372

That is wrong. The list of direct witnesses to gassings (excluding the hearsay names that were originally included) is a majority Nazi, for example;

viewtopic.php?t=372

Requesting accurate citations for the entirety of this list again.

Every single one. With links where available. Citations in any standard style: APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.

What do you mean by "accurate citation"?

Google search any of the names and "Auschwitz" and you will find plenty of details.

I will not spent time changing how DP listed the witnesses, to one you prefer.

[Archie]

You refused to quote Poliakov, showing he took Gerstein's quote about 25m2 and changed that to 93m2.

Is there a reason you are unable to check this?

[Archie]

A reminder of the forum rule "Sourcing: Formal citations are not required, but, as a basic courtesy, you are encouraged to put in some effort to source your posts, and you should be ready to supply references upon request." My request was that you comply with your own rule.

My posts have been satisfactorily sourced. It's not my fault you're too slow to figure out how to look up a citation.

I would also point you to this part of the rules:

"The right to request sources should not be abused or employed as a tactic to waste people's time."

[Keen]

I asked for clarification... I asked you to comply with forum rules