4 ms·

Digging Deeper Into Holocaust History

57 points by dnetesn 6y ago

Huwyt_Nashi020 6y ago
>“We exhumed and burned 600 bodies a day. That was the quota fixed by the Germans. Two huge pyres with 300 bodies in each were burned every day. After the bodies had been burned the bones were crushed with metal tools and buried.” After the ashes and crushed bones were buried, another survivor said, “the Hitlerites filled in the ditches, plowed up and sowed the field.” Right, the bodies don't exist because a retreating army depleted of resources and willpower has the time and energy for a mass exhumation and cremation of 600 bodies per day, then crushing the bones into dust and dispersing them. Anyone want to guess how much fuel that would consume? If you're reading this you're smart enough to know this is complete fabrication. Your hatred of fascism or fondness for Jews does not change history. Have the courage to admit it. At least to yourself.
fiftyacorn 6y ago
I read years ago the third archive was thought to be I'm the grounds of the Chinese embassy
charliebrownau 6y ago
They might find out the true number is 275k , not 6m
NotACatLover 6y ago
This is even a better review of the topic. https://archive.org/details/OneThirdOfTheHolocaustHDVideoHQSound https://archive.org/details/OneThirdOfTheHolocaustHDVideoHQS... Highly suggest giving it a watch when you find free time.
- maratc 6y ago
  > The result of this investigation is that all the "historical knowledge" which is taught in the school history books about these three camps, is based solely on the dubious testimonies of very few self-proclaimed "eyewitnesses", which are contradictive and technically and scientifically impossible. Looks like a Holocaust denial movie to me.
  - chewz 6y ago
    This is sad true that has nothing to do with denials. We know only two confirmed survivors of Belzec - one was shot right after the war in 1946. For that simple reason - lack of victims testimonies - we know very little about the details of what has really happened - even simple facts like location of buildings, timeline etc... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp
    - maratc 6y ago
      We still have Hoefle Telegram for the numbers I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfle_Telegram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfle_Telegram
      - chewz 6y ago
        True but usually you have multiple documents, testimonies and material facts that you can compare for that simple reason that human memory fails. Some people say it was 100 meters on the left and some others it was 300 meters to the right etc... Also we know about other death camps - Sobibor, Plaszow, Treblinka - that they have evolved with time, procedures changed etc. With little material documents, lack of victims testimonies and lacking archeological research historians know way less that they would like to... Auschwitz is very well documented and there is plenty of testimonies. But Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor less so... > The lack of viable witnesses who could testify about the camp's operation is the primary reason why Bełżec is not well known despite the enormous number of victims.[8] Israeli historian David Silberklang writes that Belzec "was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - detaro 6y ago
      When it's claimed that it's "scientifically impossible" it has quite a lot to do with denials. Especially in the context of the authors other works.
rtkaratekid 6y ago
Pressing prisoners to hide the mass graves which likely held bodies of friends and family is some pretty dark stuff. Each time I learn more about the Holocaust it just seems to get worse and worse. I didn’t think it could, but here we are.
- ianai 6y ago
  Frankly, my sense of where we are culturally and historically makes me think society needs to spend some serious resources mass educating around those times. Those times were as bad and worse than the historical accounts indicate. We could inoculate ourselves by voluntarily relearning the lessons from those times or live long enough to see them swing back around with new actors.
superflit 6y ago
Seeing how the China and Italy are not able to cremate enough bodies in smaller numbers. I can only imagine the Germans had some special technique that maybe was lost on operation "Paper Clip"? There was some Tech advancements on nazi German that may have spilled on this nefarious use. Edit: some people are ignoring that advances in technology can have positive and negative uses. Nazi german was way ahead in propulsion and engine fuel. What if these technologies were used to speed up the process we are not considering they were using coal as probably the coal supply lines were depleted but about about fuel engine? propulsion engine used to evil acts?
- vmh1928 6y ago
  I doubt either of those countries have built crematorium for large scale body disposal and are using pre-pandemic facilities. Not sure what the point of your post is really other than a back-handed denialist swipe.
- DanBC 6y ago
  Imagine a person today who dies. They're going to weigh on average 80 kg. If they're cremated they'll be wearing a full set of clothes, and be in a coffin, and they'll be cremated on their own. There will be a full combustion. Afterwards their remains will go through checking to remove large metal items (hips, knees, metal from the coffin or clothing) and then the remains will go through a grinder and packaged and given back to the family. Now imagining all the people who died in the death camps. They were malnourished and famished. They would have weighed maybe 40 - 50 kg. They weren't in coffins. They were naked. There would have been multiple corpses per crematoria burning. There may not have been full combustion. The remains went through big industrial grinders, and after that the remains were spread on fields. Yes, it's fucking obvious that the Nazis used different cremation methods in the genocidal campaign than we use today.
burntoutfire 6y ago
The articles mixes the terms "Warsaw Ghetto uprising" and "Warsaw Uprising". They were two separate uprisings [1]. The fact that the author does not know that makes any of his claims on the subject questionable. I mean it's absolutely basic knowledge for anyone interested in the subject. [1] The Jewish one being an order of magnitude smaller - it lead to death of around 13k Jews and a demolition of one district of Warsaw (the Ghetto), while the Polish one lead to death of 150k-200k Poles and demolition of majority of Warsaw.
- detaro 6y ago
  How does it mix them? Just because it, after clearly establishing which one it talks about, once says "the Warsaw uprising" (note lack of capitalization?)? None of the facts seem mixed up?
  - burntoutfire 6y ago
    It refers to Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as "the Warsaw Uprising", which looks like lack of knowledge that these are two distinct uprisings.
    - detaro 6y ago
      I think it's pretty clear that when it says at one point "the Warsaw uprising" it means "the uprising in Warsaw this article has been talking about then entire thing", not "the Warsaw Uprising". Bit sloppy, maybe? Indicative of lack of knowledge, don't think so.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- bjourne 6y ago
  TIL. I had no idea there were two different uprisings in Warsaw.
scyzoryk_xyz 6y ago
We will never know the full and complete story of everything that happened in those years. Too much was happening, all at the same time. The Nazis approached their work systematically and with an enormous obsession with detail. A lot of what we know is due to information being scrupulously catalogued and recorded. The concentration camps were corporate legal entities which extracted labor and then re-sold it into the economy/war machine. In the highly emotional narratives on the topic this is frequently left out - the Holocaust was a process, optimized to supercharge the global war effort. And it worked. When the tides of the war turned, those same records were then systematically erased and burned, though the efforts were spread thin, we have some evidence of these cover-up efforts. This is often the purpose of these investigations - to show that this wasn't a crime of the moment or of passion, to show the premeditation. At the point of the Warsaw Uprising everyone was desperate - an unstoppable horde was approaching from the East - but the Nazis still continued executing the plan. Much of what we know is an accumulation of the remaining records + systematically catalogued recollections of the survivors. In an alternate reality in which the Nazis win, it would have been possible that nobody would have found out about much of it at all. Which is highly relevant for us today, and gives a lot to think about all the other Holocausts we perhaps are not as familiar with. The ones happening now, and the ones that happened but were successfully covered up. (I'm not a researcher - 3/4 of my grandparents are survivors of the Buchenwald/Auschwitz-Birkenau/Ravensbruck KL's and these are just my two-cents of amateurish thoughts on a subject endlessly discussed here in Poland)
- hef19898 6y ago
  I might add, so, that the Nazis might have covered up things. Yet, it was kind of common knowledge what happened to the Jews. Even if people, like two of my grandparents, did everything to ignore it. Because the people next to concentration camps knew what was going on. As did those who got appartments from Jews. Anecdata, my other grandmother, she worked as a maid at the time, used to leave food outside for the inmates of a nearby concentration camp when they were driven work. Until she was told in no uncertain terms to step if she didn't want to end up there as well. She had a painting from one prisoner, unfortunately I never asked her more about it. My point being, people knew. Maybe not the extent, but the overall picture. And a lot of them just outright denied that knowledge after the war. Kind of understanding, this attitude prepared the ground for outright holocaust denial.

57 points by dnetesn 6y ago

>“We exhumed and burned 600 bodies a day. That was the quota fixed by the Germans. Two huge pyres with 300 bodies in each were burned every day. After the bodies had been burned the bones were crushed with metal tools and buried.” After the ashes and crushed bones were buried, another survivor said, “the Hitlerites filled in the ditches, plowed up and sowed the field.” Right, the bodies don't exist because a retreating army depleted of resources and willpower has the time and energy for a mass exhumation and cremation of 600 bodies per day, then crushing the bones into dust and dispersing them. Anyone want to guess how much fuel that would consume? If you're reading this you're smart enough to know this is complete fabrication. Your hatred of fascism or fondness for Jews does not change history. Have the courage to admit it. At least to yourself.

fiftyacorn 6y ago

I read years ago the third archive was thought to be I'm the grounds of the Chinese embassy

charliebrownau 6y ago

They might find out the true number is 275k , not 6m

NotACatLover 6y ago

This is even a better review of the topic. https://archive.org/details/OneThirdOfTheHolocaustHDVideoHQSound https://archive.org/details/OneThirdOfTheHolocaustHDVideoHQS... Highly suggest giving it a watch when you find free time.

maratc 6y ago
> The result of this investigation is that all the "historical knowledge" which is taught in the school history books about these three camps, is based solely on the dubious testimonies of very few self-proclaimed "eyewitnesses", which are contradictive and technically and scientifically impossible. Looks like a Holocaust denial movie to me.
- chewz 6y ago
  This is sad true that has nothing to do with denials. We know only two confirmed survivors of Belzec - one was shot right after the war in 1946. For that simple reason - lack of victims testimonies - we know very little about the details of what has really happened - even simple facts like location of buildings, timeline etc... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp
  - maratc 6y ago
    We still have Hoefle Telegram for the numbers I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfle_Telegram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfle_Telegram
    - chewz 6y ago
      True but usually you have multiple documents, testimonies and material facts that you can compare for that simple reason that human memory fails. Some people say it was 100 meters on the left and some others it was 300 meters to the right etc... Also we know about other death camps - Sobibor, Plaszow, Treblinka - that they have evolved with time, procedures changed etc. With little material documents, lack of victims testimonies and lacking archeological research historians know way less that they would like to... Auschwitz is very well documented and there is plenty of testimonies. But Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor less so... > The lack of viable witnesses who could testify about the camp's operation is the primary reason why Bełżec is not well known despite the enormous number of victims.[8] Israeli historian David Silberklang writes that Belzec "was perhaps the place most representative of the totality and finality of the Nazi plans for Jews". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belzec_extermination_camp
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - detaro 6y ago
    When it's claimed that it's "scientifically impossible" it has quite a lot to do with denials. Especially in the context of the authors other works.

rtkaratekid 6y ago

Pressing prisoners to hide the mass graves which likely held bodies of friends and family is some pretty dark stuff. Each time I learn more about the Holocaust it just seems to get worse and worse. I didn’t think it could, but here we are.

ianai 6y ago
Frankly, my sense of where we are culturally and historically makes me think society needs to spend some serious resources mass educating around those times. Those times were as bad and worse than the historical accounts indicate. We could inoculate ourselves by voluntarily relearning the lessons from those times or live long enough to see them swing back around with new actors.

superflit 6y ago

Seeing how the China and Italy are not able to cremate enough bodies in smaller numbers. I can only imagine the Germans had some special technique that maybe was lost on operation "Paper Clip"? There was some Tech advancements on nazi German that may have spilled on this nefarious use. Edit: some people are ignoring that advances in technology can have positive and negative uses. Nazi german was way ahead in propulsion and engine fuel. What if these technologies were used to speed up the process we are not considering they were using coal as probably the coal supply lines were depleted but about about fuel engine? propulsion engine used to evil acts?

vmh1928 6y ago
I doubt either of those countries have built crematorium for large scale body disposal and are using pre-pandemic facilities. Not sure what the point of your post is really other than a back-handed denialist swipe.
DanBC 6y ago
Imagine a person today who dies. They're going to weigh on average 80 kg. If they're cremated they'll be wearing a full set of clothes, and be in a coffin, and they'll be cremated on their own. There will be a full combustion. Afterwards their remains will go through checking to remove large metal items (hips, knees, metal from the coffin or clothing) and then the remains will go through a grinder and packaged and given back to the family. Now imagining all the people who died in the death camps. They were malnourished and famished. They would have weighed maybe 40 - 50 kg. They weren't in coffins. They were naked. There would have been multiple corpses per crematoria burning. There may not have been full combustion. The remains went through big industrial grinders, and after that the remains were spread on fields. Yes, it's fucking obvious that the Nazis used different cremation methods in the genocidal campaign than we use today.

burntoutfire 6y ago

The articles mixes the terms "Warsaw Ghetto uprising" and "Warsaw Uprising". They were two separate uprisings [1]. The fact that the author does not know that makes any of his claims on the subject questionable. I mean it's absolutely basic knowledge for anyone interested in the subject. [1] The Jewish one being an order of magnitude smaller - it lead to death of around 13k Jews and a demolition of one district of Warsaw (the Ghetto), while the Polish one lead to death of 150k-200k Poles and demolition of majority of Warsaw.

detaro 6y ago
How does it mix them? Just because it, after clearly establishing which one it talks about, once says "the Warsaw uprising" (note lack of capitalization?)? None of the facts seem mixed up?
- burntoutfire 6y ago
  It refers to Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as "the Warsaw Uprising", which looks like lack of knowledge that these are two distinct uprisings.
  - detaro 6y ago
    I think it's pretty clear that when it says at one point "the Warsaw uprising" it means "the uprising in Warsaw this article has been talking about then entire thing", not "the Warsaw Uprising". Bit sloppy, maybe? Indicative of lack of knowledge, don't think so.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
bjourne 6y ago
TIL. I had no idea there were two different uprisings in Warsaw.

scyzoryk_xyz 6y ago

We will never know the full and complete story of everything that happened in those years. Too much was happening, all at the same time. The Nazis approached their work systematically and with an enormous obsession with detail. A lot of what we know is due to information being scrupulously catalogued and recorded. The concentration camps were corporate legal entities which extracted labor and then re-sold it into the economy/war machine. In the highly emotional narratives on the topic this is frequently left out - the Holocaust was a process, optimized to supercharge the global war effort. And it worked. When the tides of the war turned, those same records were then systematically erased and burned, though the efforts were spread thin, we have some evidence of these cover-up efforts. This is often the purpose of these investigations - to show that this wasn't a crime of the moment or of passion, to show the premeditation. At the point of the Warsaw Uprising everyone was desperate - an unstoppable horde was approaching from the East - but the Nazis still continued executing the plan. Much of what we know is an accumulation of the remaining records + systematically catalogued recollections of the survivors. In an alternate reality in which the Nazis win, it would have been possible that nobody would have found out about much of it at all. Which is highly relevant for us today, and gives a lot to think about all the other Holocausts we perhaps are not as familiar with. The ones happening now, and the ones that happened but were successfully covered up. (I'm not a researcher - 3/4 of my grandparents are survivors of the Buchenwald/Auschwitz-Birkenau/Ravensbruck KL's and these are just my two-cents of amateurish thoughts on a subject endlessly discussed here in Poland)

hef19898 6y ago
I might add, so, that the Nazis might have covered up things. Yet, it was kind of common knowledge what happened to the Jews. Even if people, like two of my grandparents, did everything to ignore it. Because the people next to concentration camps knew what was going on. As did those who got appartments from Jews. Anecdata, my other grandmother, she worked as a maid at the time, used to leave food outside for the inmates of a nearby concentration camp when they were driven work. Until she was told in no uncertain terms to step if she didn't want to end up there as well. She had a painting from one prisoner, unfortunately I never asked her more about it. My point being, people knew. Maybe not the extent, but the overall picture. And a lot of them just outright denied that knowledge after the war. Kind of understanding, this attitude prepared the ground for outright holocaust denial.