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David Irving

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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »
    Not since the 1960s, AFAIK. Since then the Auschwitz range has generally been 1-1.5m deaths at the camp.

    There's certainly been no major revision of the Holocaust numbers that I'm aware of. To take an example, there's certainly been nothing akin to the upheaval that Stalinist studies has seen over the past two decades

    1990 I believe

    http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/12/weekinreview/ideas-trends-auschwitz-revisionism-an-israeli-scholar-s-case.html?src=pm

    http://fotos.fotoflexer.com/47d380f3e1b5e0bc0010417ef6849481.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    From the very article that you referenced: 'Among Holocaust historians, Mr. Bauer said, the larger figures ''have been dismissed for years, except that it hasn't reached the public and I think it's about time that it did"'

    I can't think of a serious historian who as posited a figure of four million deaths at Auschwitz alone


  • Registered Users Posts: 38 GideonMcGrane


    The numbers at Auschwitz have been revised have they not, this on the back of research and review.
    I would hasten to add that this is not an attempt on my part to diminish or deny but simply pointing out that numbers have been revised.....

    How have the numbers at Auschwitz been revised :confused:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    How have the numbers at Auschwitz been revised :confused:

    They were revised as in my previous post.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    This is actually an interesting read, you might find it interesting considering where it comes from

    http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/controversies/deathroll/MHerald050492.html


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    They were revised as in my previous post.
    Again: Correcting one sign does not equate to a wholesale revision of academic consensus. The latter has been settled for decades and there has been no significant shift amongst historians in the "numbers killed fluctuating and dropping".

    What is happening is that the popular view of the Auschwitz numbers (note: not the overall death toll, the six million figure for Jewish deaths has not been recently questioned in the academic or popular realm) is catching up with the view of historians. Which, to reiterate, has not significantly moved since the early 1960s.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Indeed, but it does raise questions in the minds of deniers as to what else is "wrong" .
    And I still maintain that the deniers etc are doing a service by keeping this subject "alive" and making people continue to prove or disprove aspects of it....the drop in numbers killed in Auschwitz is a point showing this.
    Is is important that this continues and that deniers offer new debunks, possibly new, and that non- deniers refute them or not .
    Prussian blue is a case for this on its own.

    Nobody was gassed as Dachau, but I have spoken to many people who are unaware of this. There are plenty of ideas people have about this dreadful time in history and it is important that they are informed if what happened and informed correctly ...or as best can be done now all these years later.

    I still maintain the holocaust was more than the camps....pity so many latch onto this part of it without exploring the wider crime!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    And I still maintain that the deniers etc are doing a service by keeping this subject "alive" and making people continue to prove or disprove aspects of it....the drop in numbers killed in Auschwitz is a point showing this.
    Good academic research established the numbers killed at Auschwitz decades ago. What role did deniers play in that?

    I think there is a fundamentally flawed understanding of how historical research operates at work here. Historians do not jump onto a subject whenever it appears on the news or is challenged. Rather, research is a full-time occupation that continues regardless of what is on television. A subject like the Holocaust has had an army of historians work on it for decades. (As if history departments up and down the land are dependent on denier controversy for funding!) The worthy challenges to the various theories and figures assembled by them do not come from outside academia but from within – every generation of historians is 'revisionist' to a degree.

    This is a process that does not need deniers. I'd go so far as to suggest that spending time debunking deniers is a spectacular waste of academic time. Instead of pursuing new research, people are forced to respond in detail to the various crackpot and nonsensical theories of uneducated or dishonest deniers. Where the outside world does impinge on academia it's in the form of political or cultural upheaval that provides fresh ways of looking at the evidence or new sources of information (eg the fall of the USSR).


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Reekwind wrote: »
    I think there is a fundamentally flawed understanding of how historical research operates at work here.
    +1. There's a huge gulf between public perception(and often the media) and Historians and historical research. EG a historian would never claim there were gas chambers at Belson, even though a couple of witnesses claimed this, but many people might believe this and it might be disseminated in some media. Big difference.

    Since the unimaginable horror of the sordid end of the Third Reich first came to light many wild theories have come up, from flying saucer superweapons, to Hitler escaping Berlin and living out his days in Argentina and the Shoah had a few wild theories of it's own, but it was the historians who shuffled through the data, evidence and documentation to winnow out such stuff and give us a truer picture of what occurred. Historians are not the issue(if one exists).

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Wibbs wrote: »
    +1. There's a huge gulf between public perception(and often the media) and Historians and historical research. EG a historian would never claim there were gas chambers at Belson, even though a couple of witnesses claimed this, but many people might believe this and it might be disseminated in some media. Big difference.

    .

    The same point I raise about Dachau.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    He claimed disease and lack of supplies in the last months of the war led to most deaths
    In the case of Belson and a couple of other concentration camps there would be some truth to this D. Germany was crumbling, food was running out and this would have obviously impacted camps more than the general populace. However to extend that to the wider policy and actions towards those marked out as undesirable by the Nazi philosophy would be simplistic at best.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    The same point I raise about Dachau.
    Agreed. However can you show me where any even half respected historian has claimed Dachau or Belson had gas chambers and were extermination camps? That was my point. Historians are not the problem, public perception and ignorance is and that goes across the board, from all sides.

    Media doesn't help either. A good example of this might be Band of Brothers the series. Damn good set of movies for my mind and pretty accurate and faithful to the book. However when we get to the concentration camp scene it get's "political" for want of a better word, heavy handed. The men of Easy company find a satellite camp of Dachau(IIRC) and there follows a realisation that there's an extermination policy towards Jews. Problem being that in the book of the same name it's a small paragraph and this isn't mentioned, the men couldn't have known at that time of the wider policies that were largely hidden in the east and Jews were actually in the minority in Dachau.

    Is this a conspiracy? No. Not even close. It's very common in media and culture to egg on ones own viewpoint in films etc "based on historical fact". A German would have written and shot a very different scene, a Russian another, a Pole... etc. Remember the US made film U-571 about the U boat and capture of the enigma machine? Total nonsense, though "based on historical fact" blah blah.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Agreed. However can you show me where any even half respected historian has claimed Dachau or Belson had gas chambers and were extermination camps? That was my point. Historians are not the problem, public perception and ignorance is and that goes across the board, from all sides.

    Media doesn't help either. A good example of this might be Band of Brothers the series. Damn good set of movies for my mind and pretty accurate and faithful to the book. However when we get to the concentration camp scene it get's "political" for want of a better word, heavy handed. The men of Easy company find a satellite camp of Dachau(IIRC) and there follows a realisation that there's an extermination policy towards Jews. Problem being that in the book of the same name it's a small paragraph and this isn't mentioned, the men couldn't have known at that time of the wider policies that were largely hidden in the east and Jews were actually in the minority in Dachau.

    Is this a conspiracy? No. Not even close. It's very common in media and culture to egg on ones own viewpoint in films etc "based on historical fact". A German would have written and shot a very different scene, a Russian another, a Pole... etc. Remember the US made film U-571 about the U boat and capture of the enigma machine? Total nonsense, though "based on historical fact" blah blah.


    Bit like the scene in Croke Psrk and the armoured car, in Michael Collins


  • Registered Users Posts: 38 GideonMcGrane


    They were revised as in my previous post.

    Ah I see, so if the four million is down to one, doesn't this mean the 6 million figure is down to 3 million, or has maths changed since I were a young 'un :confused:


  • Registered Users Posts: 38 GideonMcGrane


    Indeed, but it does raise questions in the minds of deniers as to what else is "wrong" .
    And I still maintain that the deniers etc are doing a service by keeping this subject "alive" and making people continue to prove or disprove aspects of it....the drop in numbers killed in Auschwitz is a point showing this.
    Is is important that this continues and that deniers offer new debunks, possibly new, and that non- deniers refute them or not .
    Prussian blue is a case for this on its own.

    Nobody was gassed as Dachau, but I have spoken to many people who are unaware of this. There are plenty of ideas people have about this dreadful time in history and it is important that they are informed if what happened and informed correctly ...or as best can be done now all these years later.

    I still maintain the holocaust was more than the camps....pity so many latch onto this part of it without exploring the wider crime!

    Surely the important thing is that people know 6 million people were murdered, I think the details should not be picked over like this, 6 million gassed to death its that simple.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Surely the important thing is that people know 6 million people were murdered, I think the details should not be picked over like this, 6 million gassed to death its that simple.

    And this is exactly the issue...6 million were NOT gassed to death, this is what I am talking about...it is important that such details are known and "picked over" as you say...
    Deniers make sure this issue stays in the public realm, and that the details are debated and discussed...because there was a lot of misinformation around...possibly still is, on both sides...and it needs to be examined.
    Was it Eisenhower who said that film should be made of the liberated camps because people , in years to come, will not believe this happened...think it was him who said that.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    Ah I see, so if the four million is down to one, doesn't this mean the 6 million figure is down to 3 million, or has maths changed since I were a young 'un :confused:
    Nope. The six million figure (for Jewish deaths) remains unchanged. Which is one reason why this is all a red herring
    Bit like the scene in Croke Psrk and the armoured car, in Michael Collins
    And how is people spreading lies about the Holocaust going to help dispel popular Holocaust myths?

    It's just adding a layer of obfuscation - particularly when in the area of popular culture, unlike academia, it is not a matter of calmly "debating and discussing". In the former it is the loudest voice that often wins. Hence the denialist love of a public soapbox, or any such platform, that let's them sow doubt and undermine the work of actual historians.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »

    And how is people spreading lies about the Holocaust going to help dispel popular Holocaust myths?

    .

    Surely if someone says something about the holocaust that another deems to be untrue and they can prove it so; will lead to that particular myth being dispelled, or debunked, ...although I have argued with deniers before and have had little to zero success with them even when they are presented with "proof".


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,578 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    Surely if someone says something about the holocaust that another deems to be untrue and they can prove it so; will lead to that particular myth being dispelled, or debunked, ...although I have argued with deniers before and have had little to zero success with them even when they are presented with "proof".

    You are going around in circles here. A historian disproving a lie about the Holocaust does not do anything to change the facts about what happened. Holocaust denial is a murky place where half truths and half lies are mixed together. Irving, the subject of this thread is an example of this where he collates his information and intertwines fact with his own elements of what many people interpret as blatant denial of the Holocaust.

    What point are you trying to make?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    You are going around in circles here. A historian disproving a lie about the Holocaust does not do anything to change the facts about what happened. Holocaust denial is a murky place where half truths and half lies are mixed together. Irving, the subject of this thread is an example of this where he collates his information and intertwines fact with his own elements of what many people interpret as blatant denial of the Holocaust.

    What point are you trying to make?

    I have already made my point in previous posts


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,578 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    I have already made my point in previous posts

    In which case you can stop reposting the same ramblings again.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    In which case you can stop reposting the same ramblings again.


    Hah, show me where I am rambling?
    GideonMcGranes post proves my point exactly!


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    A historian disproving a lie about the Holocaust does not do anything to change the facts about what happened.
    Sorry JB am I missing something here? That makes no sense to me. Historians(not your Irving types) have shed a lot of light on the history of these events and have "debunked" some of the more fanciful stories(people being turned into soap/gas chambers at Belson/Dachau) while shedding light on the wider atrocities of the time that may have gone unrecorded.
    GideonMcGranes post proves my point exactly!
    To be fair I'd have to agree with this. G's post was as historically incorrect as it could be, regardless of whether one is debating the actual number involved or not. It massively simplifies a very complex and horrific set of events. It's the Hollywood version of events. It's not even that.

    The problem with this particular discussion can be its hot potato vibe. It's a sacred cow for the west, that is bound up in too much emotion at times. This leads, or can lead to hyperbole, or even simple ignorance/mistruths, See above "6 million gassed" as an example. Worse it can lead to a blanket ban on debate about the details.

    Personally I think this discussion gets far too bogged down in specific numbers. The basic and plain facts should speak for themselves. The Nazis and their allies from very early on and publicly declared open season on "undesirables" in their societies, chief among them Jews and Bolsheviks, but encompassing the "non Aryan", the disabled, the "antisocial". They cast a wide and repugnant net and many millions were caught up in that net and millions of men women and children never came home because they were destroyed by all means at the Nazis disposal. Anyone who can with a straight face deny that is in my humble and not very academic view a thundering fcukwit.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    I'd also add that with these events because of the actual horror of them there can be a tendency to accept all accounts as valid, or at least it can feel squeamish to question them. EG earlier in the thread Vasily Grossman's report was held up as an historically important and accurate account, yet it was second hand, got many facts wrong, inc numbers, methods, camp chronology, with a side order of a couple of clear impossibilities. Shaul Ladany's account of Belson having gas chambers(in which he was actually placed) another. IMHO It's that sorta apparent faith in some accounts that gives the deniers far too much leeway into the wider public mind. The "oh look we can prove he was wrong about A B and C, therefore none of it happened!!!" method of BS debate.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Sorry JB am I missing something here? That makes no sense to me. Historians(not your Irving types) have shed a lot of light on the history of these events and have "debunked" some of the more fanciful stories(people being turned into soap/gas chambers at Belson/Dachau) while shedding light on the wider atrocities of the time that may have gone unrecorded.

    To be fair I'd have to agree with this. G's post was as historically incorrect as it could be, regardless of whether one is debating the actual number involved or not. It massively simplifies a very complex and horrific set of events. It's the Hollywood version of events. It's not even that.

    The problem with this particular discussion can be its hot potato vibe. It's a sacred cow for the west, that is bound up in too much emotion at times. This leads, or can lead to hyperbole, or even simple ignorance/mistruths, See above "6 million gassed" as an example. Worse it can lead to a blanket ban on debate about the details.

    Personally I think this discussion gets far too bogged down in specific numbers. The basic and plain facts should speak for themselves. The Nazis and their allies from very early on and publicly declared open season on "undesirables" in their societies, chief among them Jews and Bolsheviks, but encompassing the "non Aryan", the disabled, the "antisocial". They cast a wide and repugnant net and many millions were caught up in that net and millions of men women and children never came home because they were destroyed by all means at the Nazis disposal. Anyone who can with a straight face deny that is in my humble and not very academic view a thundering fcukwit.


    This is a superb post


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,578 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    Wibbs wrote: »
    Originally Posted by jonniebgood1

    A historian disproving a lie about the Holocaust does not do anything to change the facts about what happened.
    Sorry JB am I missing something here? That makes no sense to me. Historians(not your Irving types) have shed a lot of light on the history of these events and have "debunked" some of the more fanciful stories(people being turned into soap/gas chambers at Belson/Dachau) while shedding light on the wider atrocities of the time that may have gone unrecorded.
    .

    The history of these events does not change because somebody invents a story about soap (to use example given). Thousands of people died at Belsen- this is a fact and is widely recorded and recognised. If a person says (or comes up with a theory) that there was a gas chamber at Belsen and a Historian then disproves this, it does not change the fact that thousands of people died at Belsen. Neither does it uncover any new historical data about Belsen as this data is already well explored. With respect I think that is clear?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,578 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    Wibbs wrote: »
    I'd also add that with these events because of the actual horror of them there can be a tendency to accept all accounts as valid, or at least it can feel squeamish to question them. EG earlier in the thread Vasily Grossman's report was held up as an historically important and accurate account, yet it was second hand, got many facts wrong, inc numbers, methods, camp chronology, with a side order of a couple of clear impossibilities. Shaul Ladany's account of Belson having gas chambers(in which he was actually placed) another. IMHO It's that sorta apparent faith in some accounts that gives the deniers far too much leeway into the wider public mind. The "oh look we can prove he was wrong about A B and C, therefore none of it happened!!!" method of BS debate.

    To be fair I believe it was presented as a journalistic account (feel free to quote where it is presented as 'historically important and accurate account'). It should be considered for what it is, a first hand account.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Unfortunately first hand accounts can be the problem sometimes and leave the door open for deniers to use it as a debunking tool


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    Surely if someone says something about the holocaust that another deems to be untrue and they can prove it so; will lead to that particular myth being dispelled, or debunked, ...although I have argued with deniers before and have had little to zero success with them even when they are presented with "proof".
    Look, we can cut through a lot of crap here. Show me an example of where popular misconceptions around the Holocaust have been dispelled following denialist allegations.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »
    Look, we can cut through a lot of crap here. Show me an example of where popular misconceptions around the Holocaust have been dispelled following denialist allegations.

    Soap and lampshades....there's two


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    Elaborate


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »
    Elaborate

    You know exactly what I am talking about ..,please, enough of the passive aggressive .
    You know precisely what was believed about soap and lampshades for years, confronted and challenged by deniers and now accepted as not fact at all.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »
    Look, we can cut through a lot of crap here. Show me an example of where popular misconceptions around the Holocaust have been dispelled following denialist allegations.

    Quote: GideonMcGrane
    Surely the important thing is that people know 6 million people were murdered, I think the details should not be picked over like this, 6 million gassed to death its that simple.


    And...
    On this very thread....this guy is under some misconception for sure....


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    You know exactly what I am talking about ..,please, enough of the passive aggressive .
    You know precisely what was believed about soap and lampshades for years, confronted and challenged by deniers and now accepted as not fact at all.
    And I'm still asking you to elaborate. Because I'm still waiting for an explanation of how deniers were the ones to force a rethink of those stories and how that has filtered through to the popular conciousness
    And...
    On this very thread....this guy is under some misconception for sure....
    So all we need is more deniers to sow more lies and then such popular misconceptions will disappear? Because historians will be forced by these denials to pay attention to a previously ignored aspect of the Holocaust (ie gas chambers)? Really?

    But no, that's not an example of what I asked for


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    The history of these events does not change because somebody invents a story about soap (to use example given). Thousands of people died at Belsen- this is a fact and is widely recorded and recognised. If a person says (or comes up with a theory) that there was a gas chamber at Belsen and a Historian then disproves this, it does not change the fact that thousands of people died at Belsen. Neither does it uncover any new historical data about Belsen as this data is already well explored. With respect I think that is clear?
    Not really JB, though clearer. If part of the narrative about an event is discovered to be hearsay, this changes that part of the narrative. It doesn't change the wider facts, but it does change the facts within it. If historians hadn't come out and said "eh no, that was innaccurate" these "facts" would be believed. That said I note the wikipedia page on Shaul Ladany, still has this down as "fact" with no discussion I can see, so some work yet to be done on getting things right, in the wider world at least.
    To be fair I believe it was presented as a journalistic account (feel free to quote where it is presented as 'historically important and accurate account'). It should be considered for what it is, a first hand account.
    However it's not a first hand account, unless that definition has changed. It's a secondhand account based on some witness testimony.

    RW said this back in the thread;
    Reekwind wrote: »
    Aside from being an excellent writer, Grossman is a good and genuinely reliable source. Any issues from his account stem from the fact that he was a journalist (and journalists, in any country at any time, are not historians) and not that he was Soviet

    Incidentally, keep in mind that this was published in 1944 in sources independent of the West and already the gas chambers are being noted and their operation detailed
    Passersby reading that might conclude, yep genuinely reliable source, but subsequent historical research has proven it's inaccurate on more than a few scores. Numbers involved are tripled, the chronology of the camp is wildly out(by a whole year) and the operation of the gas chambers is muddled and contradictory, never mind the tearing apart of children by guards and genital biting dogs(the latter is at least physically possible).

    Christ lads and lasses I'm really concerned I'm coming across as a gobshíte denialist here and I am most certainly not. I do find it weird that in places clearly dubious source material is apparently accepted with no filter, or critique, even lauded as a reliable source. Like I said earlier if a report on Hiroshima bombing written by someone who wasn't there, listening to a few witnesses, claimed three times the amount of casualties, 5 different bombs and a date out by a year it would be added to the "interesting take, but not good history" pile. No way would it be deemed a reliable source. Put it yet another way, if Grossman's report was the only one in existence it would be quite simply wrong in many aspects of the historical facts we know today.
    You know precisely what was believed about soap and lampshades for years, confronted and challenged by deniers and now accepted as not fact at all.
    No, not even close MT. You're again confusing the world of the historians and historical narrative and the wider cultural narrative world. GideonMcGrane's "six million gassed" is an example of the latter. It's incorrect. Not by much to be fair, if he had written "six million murdered" it would be fine. The other stuff, like G's example may have been believed and promulgated in the non historian world, but no historian of any repute bought into it, not after the 60'70's anyway. It was not considered historical fact. From pretty early on too.

    These are however examples of publicly believed half arsed theories that deniers always latch onto and claim some sort of historian(or wider, usually Jewish/Israeli/New world order/smurfs conspiracy where none existed in the first place.

    Put it another way MT, the denialists harp on about numbers being changed. OK, but is that not a perfect example of good historical research at work? If there was some mad conspiracy going on then numbers would have remained the same. After all the deniers would still be considered odd, or extremists, so no issue there.

    People also forget that the Holocaust was largely ignored, brushed aside in the immediate post war years. Germany was vanquished but needed to be born again as good guys, a bulwark against the commies. Anti German feeling in the west was not encouraged. If there was any truth to the denier point of view then you can be damn sure the post war allies would have ran with it. Raul Hilberg who undertook the first real decent historical approach to the subject struggled to get his paper published and this went on for over a year and through various publishers. This was in the 1960's. If any conspiracy existed it was to keep the whole thing quiet, not ramp it up. The Soviets took the opposite approach and kept the anti German feeling going. Now when you consider that both sides of the Iron Curtain pointing nukes at each other at the very height of the cold war agreed over the basic facts of the period, this says a helluva lot.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Reekwind wrote: »
    And I'm still asking you to elaborate. Because I'm still waiting for an explanation of how deniers were the ones to force a rethink of those stories and how that has filtered through to the popular conciousness
    Exactly. One obvious problem with the theory is the simple fact that deniers really only got wider exposure on the interweb, so we're talking 15 years maybe. These debates have been going on and historical accuracy fine tuned long before that. I remember reading books in the 80's that dismissed both the soap story and the gas chambers at Belson.

    EDIT I remember the ten million killed dropping to six million too, though as I've said for me arguing over the numbers is a sideline and IMH a ghoulish, even distasteful sideline. When you see a figure of 100,000 Jews dying in the Warsaw ghetto alone, starved to death, beaten, the "lucky" ones felled by disease in under a year and these were German figures. They even made propaganda films showing the "rats".

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Registered Users Posts: 38 GideonMcGrane


    Reekwind wrote: »
    Nope. The six million figure (for Jewish deaths) remains unchanged. Which is one reason why this is all a red herring.

    Ok, I'm obviously in over my head and I dont mean to harp on but this is rather confusing.

    The figure of 6 million hasn't been altered despite the fact that the Auschwitz 4 million is officially down to 1 million?

    Can someone explain to me how this is so?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »
    And I'm still asking you to elaborate. Because I'm still waiting for an explanation of how deniers were the ones to force a rethink of those stories and how that has filtered through to the popular conciousness


    So let me ask you how many tonnes of soap were made from humans and how many lampshades were made from skin?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Ok, I'm obviously in over my head and I dont mean to harp on but this is rather confusing.

    The figure of 6 million hasn't been altered despite the fact that the Auschwitz 4 million is officially down to 1 million?

    Can someone explain to me how this is so?
    Back in the 70's I recall a ten million figure overall. It varied quite a bit, except it was accepted it was many millions.

    I'm probably way off here, but I think when the Berlin wall came down etc historians had much more access to each other and access to more records and documentation and the sites themselves(and witnesses too). While there were concentration camps throughout Nazi territory(and of their allies), the extermination camps were in the east in areas within the Soviet Bloc. So more solid detail emerged and what had been guesstimates to some degree became much more solid.

    Just to add sometimes there is confusion about concentration camps versus extermination camps and often the two are conflated. Very broadly concentration camps were work/punitive camps for various types of prisoners, whereas extermination camps had but one purpose as the name suggests. Of course concentration camps inmates died/were murdered in their droves, starved or were simply worked to death, but it wasn't an automatic death sentence. Many more survived such camps. On the other hand extermination camps were essentially slaughterhouses and had significantly fewer survivors. Some camps were at times depending on the need for labour a mixture of both, Auschwitz for example.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Ok, I'm obviously in over my head and I dont mean to harp on but this is rather confusing.

    The figure of 6 million hasn't been altered despite the fact that the Auschwitz 4 million is officially down to 1 million?

    Can someone explain to me how this is so?

    There are plenty if sites around to look up this subject from general ones to fairly in-depth ones

    Try Nizkor
    http://www.nizkor.org

    Also if you are on Facebook a really good site to "friend" is the Auschwitz site , there is some excellent stuff there to get you going and it is pretty easy to get some info from.


    You will have to decide if you want to visit sites that are more on the denial side, I would think it is important to do so, as it is important to get as much info as you can to see what's what so to speak.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    So let me ask you how many tonnes of soap were made from humans and how many lampshades were made from skin?
    And the refutation of these stories had nada to do with deniers. Those stories were being questioned by historians and researchers long before the modern denier demographic came along. IIRC back in the 70's/80's it was an American Jew, an amateur historian who was among the first to question the lampshade story. He had heard these stories from people and went looking for examples(human skin bound books were another item in the meme) and could find none, nor no evidence that satisfied him they ever existed. It was always third hand "oh a friend of an uncle saw them" kind of thing. The human soap story was known to be very dubious by the 1970's.

    In the wider public mind however...

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    I'd add that IMHO anyway, internet sites on the subject can be variable to say the least. Too often extremes on both sides. Books would be your better bet, though maybe that's my age talking. :D

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,126 ✭✭✭Reekwind


    Ok, I'm obviously in over my head and I dont mean to harp on but this is rather confusing.

    The figure of 6 million hasn't been altered despite the fact that the Auschwitz 4 million is officially down to 1 million?

    Can someone explain to me how this is so?
    There's a few reasons. The first is that the overwhelming majority of victims at Auschwitz were Jews. It's never really been in question that approx 1m Jews died at the site. The issue was the Communist regime in Poland used a figure of 4m, arguing that, in addition to the Jews, millions of Poles and Soviet POWs had also been murdered there. That figure, AFAIK, was never widely accepted outside of the Eastern Bloc, with Western historians directly contradicting it from the 1970s, at the latest

    So the 'drop' wouldn't affect the 6m figure (which, remember, is only Jews killed) but, more to the point, it just reflects the fact that the original 4m figure was dodgy to begin with
    So let me ask you how many tonnes of soap were made from humans and how many lampshades were made from skin?
    Interestingly, it's been recently suggested that the Germans did indeed make soap from human fat, albeit on a far smaller scale than previously thoughts. But that's by the by and, like your response, has absolutely nothing to do with my previous query.

    So let me answer for you: deniers had nothing to do with scrapping lampshade/soap myths. That was the work of historians operating working to their own pace, ie without the need for shrill liars to draw attention to a topic. Which brings us back to you needing to show how the lies of deniers are in any way constructive
    Wibbs wrote:
    Passersby reading that might conclude, yep genuinely reliable source, but subsequent historical research has proven it's inaccurate on more than a few scores. Numbers involved are tripled, the chronology of the camp is wildly out(by a whole year) and the operation of the gas chambers is muddled and contradictory, never mind the tearing apart of children by guards and genital biting dogs(the latter is at least physically possible).
    I thought I said this a few pages back: Grossman was a journalist writing immediately after the event. I stand by the notion that he is a reliable source (ie not a rabid propagandist) but as a journalist. His is not a work of academic history.

    To stick with the Russian theme, John Reed's Ten Days is an essential read for any student of the 1917 Revolution. Yet it is a work of journalism and - despite Reed himself witnessing many of the events - contains a number of factual inaccuracies and misunderstandings. Yet Reed is a reliable source, one of the key such sources for those October days. Again: not a work of academic history


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Wibbs wrote: »
    . IIRC back in the 70's/80's it was an American Jew, an amateur historian who was among the first to question the lampshade story. He had heard these stories from people and went looking for examples(human skin bound books were another item in the meme) and could find none, nor no evidence that satisfied him they ever existed. It was always third hand "oh a friend of an uncle saw them" kind of thing. The human soap story was known to be very dubious by the 1970's.



    ..in 1948 the American military governor, General Lucius Clay, reviewed her case and determined that, despite testimony produced at her trial, Frau Koch could not be related to the lampshades and other articles which were "discovered" (i.e. planted) in the Buchenwald commandant's residence when the camp was captured in 1945. For one thing, she had not lived there since her husband's, and her own, arrest in 1943. Also her "family journal," said to be bound in human skin, and which was one of the major accusations against her, was never located, and obviously never existed.



    https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/skin.html


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,170 Mod ✭✭✭✭Wibbs


    Reekwind wrote: »
    I stand by the notion that he is a reliable source (ie not a rabid propagandist) but as a journalist.
    I just can't get my head around this RK. How can someone(or something) be a reliable source if they get so many things wrong? For a start how can one gauge the veracity of the rest of the source material? Some of it has been subsequently corroborated(not least by a Nazi guard in the place, secretly filmed for the film Shoah).

    Again I'll use my Hiroshima analogy. Would you consider it a reliable source if a journalist report got the casualty number wrong by a factor of 3, described 5 different bombs, described US planes strafing the street and got the date wrong by a year and they were in Tokyo at the time? I seriously doubt it.

    I don't doubt Grossman himself. He was trying to piece together something unimaginable and got the gist of it, from hearsay and from second hand sources.

    Even more impressively so as we can easily forget how unimaginable and fantastic it must have been to hear such stories at that time. Today unless you've lived under a rock you will have been exposed to books, documentaries, films about the subject. Even so it still shocks and as the deniers prove it still sounds almost too fantastical to be true(if the evidence wasn't deep and wide in time and documentation). Imagine putting yourself in the shoes of someone hearing about this for the first time carried in whispers and rumour in the wind of war. Even with anti Nazi propaganda you would be well forgiven for thinking "ah c'mon, pull the other one". Even some heavy duty Nazi's struggled to believe it*. To his credit he didn't.

    TL;DR? I'd consider him a source, a good source from the early days on investigation into these crimes, but a reliable one? My jury would still be out on that one. Maybe it's me being a semantics nazi. Better yet RK we'll agree to disagree and put it to bed :) We can at least agree he was a source and a bloody important one.







    *Hanna Reitsch, woman test pilot, only female winner of the iron cross, a very well connected Nazi and an admirer of Hitler to her dying day, didn't believe it when first she heard the whispers. Confronted Himmler about it and he denied it/skirted around the issue. In the end when the evidence of the horror was clear to even the blindest, she considered it a stain on the German people, but blamed it entirely on Himmler and believed her dear Adolf had no knowledge of such a crime.

    Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »

    So let me answer for you: deniers had nothing to do with scrapping lampshade/soap myths. That was the work of historians operating working to their own pace, ie without the need for shrill liars to draw attention to a topic. Which brings us back to you needing to show how the lies of deniers are in any way constructive

    Ok so I will stand corrected, I must admit as far as I was aware it was lack of evidence that killed off that myth, I was unaware that historians had uncovered this. Can you direct me to this on the web as I would be interested in learning more about this area and their research into it. Everyday is a school day isn't it?


  • Registered Users Posts: 38 GideonMcGrane


    There are plenty if sites around to look up this subject from general ones to fairly in-depth ones

    Try Nizkor
    http://www.nizkor.org

    Also if you are on Facebook a really good site to "friend" is the Auschwitz site , there is some excellent stuff there to get you going and it is pretty easy to get some info from.


    You will have to decide if you want to visit sites that are more on the denial side, I would think it is important to do so, as it is important to get as much info as you can to see what's what so to speak.

    So you're saying look up 'Denier' sites, aren't these sites from neo-Nazis who for some unfathomable reason still like Adolf Hitler.

    In saying that I dont see how the figures add up, there were 6 million, you take away 3 and you're still left with 6, surely even a child can see there is a problem with that?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    So you're saying look up 'Denier' sites, aren't these sites from neo-Nazis who for some unfathomable reason still like Adolf Hitler.

    In saying that I dont see how the figures add up, there were 6 million, you take away 3 and you're still left with 6, surely even a child can see there is a problem with that?

    I would think it is important to view these sites and get their side and view, this way you can understand where deniers come from, the arguments they use, their conspiracy theories etc.
    Yes there are neo-nazis, there are also deniers, people who have a problem with the accepted version of the Holocaust, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, etc etc etc.
    if nothing else it will lead you to do your own research on this and maybe uncover things you didn't know prior to this....


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭Mister Trebus


    Reekwind wrote: »
    . Show me an example of where popular misconceptions around the Holocaust have been dispelled following denialist allegations.


    Well as I said, I stand corrected on the soap and skin, as I thought lack of evidence and later denier highlighting this led to that myth being quashed, and not historians sorting this out as you say, perhaps a better and more credible one is when the Institute for Forensic Research in Krakow, undertook a comprehensive examination (in 1994) of Krema; against the Leuchter report.
    Also what are your views on Mattogno's approach and the typhus, fuel consumpation and capacity, wasnt he discredited too?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,578 ✭✭✭jonniebgood1


    I would think it is important to view these sites and get their side and view, this way you can understand where deniers come from, the arguments they use, their conspiracy theories etc.
    Yes there are neo-nazis, there are also deniers, people who have a problem with the accepted version of the Holocaust, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, etc etc etc.
    if nothing else it will lead you to do your own research on this and maybe uncover things you didn't know prior to this....

    I do not see why you think " it is important to view these sites and get their side and view". Can you explain this.

    You might as well go the whole hog and recommend a few racist sites, maybe some homophobic sites, it really seems a ridiculous idea that you need to understand these peoples point of view.

    A better idea I would say is to read up on the actual events of WWII, without need for the warped views of these events which you are suggesting should be read.


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