Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Thomas Dalton responds to Roberto Muehlenkamp and Andrew Mathis (2)

I. Introductions
III. Policy
IV. Techno-babble and Conclusions

II. Documents and Numbers

In his response to Andrew Mathis and me following our radio conversation with Kevin Barrett on American Freedom Radio, "Revisionist" author "Thomas Dalton" writes:

(3) On the Korherr report, it is true that I do not address it in my book Debating the Holocaust. This is because it is, in my estimation, an insignificant and inconclusive matter in the overall debate. The report was not secret, and nothing in it points to mass killing of Jews. It does, however, talk about mass evacuations, which were indeed occurring at that time (early 1943). And there are internal contradictions, in that the conclusions do not follow from the statistics, which suggests either significant error or ulterior motives of some kind. Finally, Korherr himself stated in 1977 that the “special treatment” cited in the report referred to “Jews who were to be resettled,” not killed.




Who listened to Kevin Barrett's interview with Andrew and me will remember that the Korherr Report was essentially brought up as non-Jewish assessment of the Jewish population in Europe and the world, which alone could sufficiently explain why an author who dismisses all pre-war Jewish population figures as "self-reporting" (thus I understood what Mr. "Dalton" told Kevin Barrett in this respect) calls it "an insignificant and inconclusive matter": it doesn’t fit into his picture. However, rather than accuse Mr. "Dalton" of having ignored evidence that goes against his thesis rather than at least explaining why he didn't take it into consideration, I'll give him the benefit of doubt and assume that he either had never heard of the Korherr Report before Kevin’s radio show or only read about it in run-off-the-mill "Revisionist" publications but never looked at the document itself. In the former case he doesn't seem to have bothered looking up anything other than "Revisionist" literature even after the interview, judging by the beaten "Revisionist" claims regarding the Korherr Report that he comes up with.

These claims inevitably include the one that Korherr himself claimed to have understood the term "special treatment" as referring to resettlement. In my blog Richard "I didn’t know" Korherr, I demonstrated that the text of Korherr’s original version of his report – which he was required to change by a letter from Himmler's personal staff dated 10.4.1943, a translation of which is transcribed in that blog – can only have been one that translates as follows, concerning what was eventually claimed to be deportation to the "Russian East" in the final version (emphasized parts are the ones later changed):

"Special treatment of the Jews from the
eastern provinces: ............................
The following numbers were specially treated
through the camps in the General
government .............
through the camps in the Warthegau....."


Korherr's alarm bells should have rung at the latest when he was ordered to replace this wording with the following (emphasized parts are the changes):

" Transportation of Jews from the
eastern provinces to the Russian
East
: ............................
The following numbers were sifted
through the camps in the General
Government .............
through the camps in the Warthegau....."


If, as he supposedly claimed in 1977, Korherr had inquired about the meaning of "special treatment" and been told that it referred to "Jews who were settled in the Lublin district", how could he have failed to notice the contradiction with the information he was now required to put in the report, whereby the Jews had been transported to the "Russian East"? He might have refrained from pointing out this flagrant contradiction as it clearly became apparent from the instruction he had received ("Another wording may not be used.") that he was to use the prescribed text regardless of what had actually been done with the Jews from the "eastern provinces", i.e. that the claim of their having been transported to the "Russian East" was meant to cover up their actual fate in the report. But then, what could Korherr have expected that actual fate to have been?

Unless we are to accept the proposition of Korherr having assumed that Himmler, ostensibly the most loyal of Hitler’s paladins, wanted to cheat his beloved Führer by having him believe that more than 1.4 million Jews who were actually living in the Lublin district, moreover without being confined to ghettos or concentration camps, had instead been moved to the occupied Soviet territories (a deception of the head of state in which Korherr himself would have been directly involved, at the latest, when he prepared the "short" version of his report for Hitler), we cannot but conclude that, at the latest when he received the instruction of 10.4.1943, it must have dawned on Korherr that "special treatment" of the Jews meant neither settlement in the Lublin district nor transportation to the occupied Soviet territories, but something that neither the RSHA nor Himmler wanted to spell out.

And what, other than killing, could that possibly have been, especially in the context of the "Final Solution of the European Jewish Question", an endeavor to remove all Jews from the German area of influence in Europe?

That Korherr was aware of tabulating mass murder also becomes apparent from further parts of his report. Thus, under item 6 of chapter V on page 9 of the report’s "long" version, he wrote the following (my translation):

6. In addition, according to data from
the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
there is the evacuation of... 633 300 Jews
in the Russian territories
incl. the former Baltic
countries since the beginning of the
Eastern Campaign.


How the Jews could have conceivably been evacuated in the Russian territories, the claimed destination of most other "evacuees" mentioned in this chapter, Korherr did not explain. And if this alone didn’t already make clear what said "evacuation" meant, Korherr spelled it out in the final chapter X of the "long" version, where he wrote the following (my translation and emphases):

It must not be overlooked in this respect that of the deaths of Soviet Russian Jews in the occupied Eastern territories only a part was recorded, whereas deaths in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all.


The only other place in the "long" version where Korherr mentioned Soviet Russian Jews was the above-quoted item 6 of chapter V on page 9, so it is clear that the term "evacuation" in that item meant nothing other than "deaths of Soviet Russian Jews" in the passage quoted immediately above, Korherr pointing out that the figure of such deaths given to him by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt was only a partial figure.

Another passage that shows Korherr’s awareness of what he was collecting figures about is the following at the end of the report's "short" version (my translation and emphases):

In total it is likely that since 1933, i.e. in the first decade of National Socialist power, European Jewry lost almost half of its stock.
Thereof again only half, i.e. a quarter of the European total stock in 1937, is likely to have gone to the other continents.


Half of ten million Jews in Europe in 1937 makes 5 million, and half of 5 million is 2.5 million. How could these ca. 2.5 million Jews possibly have been lost to the "stock" of European Jewry if, as pointed out by Korherr, they had not moved to the world’s other continents?

There is only one possibility: death.

But Mr. "Dalton" claims that "nothing in it [the report] points to mass killing of Jews". He must have read it with thick ideological tomato slices covering his eyes, if he read it at all. Or then he is making this claim against better knowledge.

The overall order of magnitude mentioned by Korherr in the paragraph last quoted ("almost half" of ca. 10 million Jews in Europe in 1937, i.e. "almost" 5 million Jews) is not borne out by Korherr's detailed figures but largely based on probably nothing more than educated guesses regarding the categories expressly mentioned by Korherr (deaths of Soviet Russian Jews in the "occupied eastern territories" not included in his tabulations, deaths in the rest of European Russia and at the front, movements of Jews inside Russia to the Asian part thereof, Jewish emigration and Jewish excess mortality in the states of central and western Europe other than Germany) and maybe also regarding categories not expressly mentioned. However, in what concerns the ca. 2.5 million persons lost to the "stock" of European Jewry without having gone to the world’s other continents, Korherr apparently chose to remain on the safe side of what his detailed figures add up to, as I demonstrated in the aforementioned blog. I guess this difference between Korherr’s educated guess as concerns overall Jewish population losses and the number of deaths that his detailed figures add up to is what conspiracy-sniffing "Revisionists" like "Dalton", with some self-projection, consider "internal contradictions" suggesting "either significant error or ulterior motives of some kind".

Last but not least, the Korherr Report was secret at the time it was issued, contrary to what Mr. "Dalton" claims. As this facsimile of the report’s "long version" shows, the document was a "Geheime Reichssache", a secret Reich matter.

Mr. "Dalton"’s assessment of the Korherr Report is thus wrong on all counts.

The author’s next point is this:

(4) Andrew said that the two dozen or so references to "6 million" suffering Jews, in the years prior to WWII, was a result of "cherry-picking". Of course, there are other references to fewer than 6 million, since different portions of that number were suffering in different places and times. But the peak figure is almost always 6 million (occasionally, 5 million). So he has a case only if there are many references to more than 6 million, i.e. 7 million, 8 million, 9 million, etc. I doubt that they exist, but perhaps they do. I suggest he undertake that research, in the New York Times, for the years 1900-1945, and let us know the results. If they prove to be more numerous, then the '6 million' would carry no special significance, and I would be happy to modify my text accordingly.


Andrew may want to do the exercise suggested by Mr. "Dalton". I for my part think it is of little if any relevance whether or not there is a predominance of pre-1945 references to "6 million" Jews living in misery or threatened by annihilation. If this is so, it doesn't in any way affect the fact that the order of magnitude of Jewish losses under the Nazis accepted by historians – i.e. 5 to 6 million – is borne out by demographic data regarding the Jewish world population, the Jewish population of Europe and the Jewish population of each individual country that was affected by Nazi anti-Jewish measures, and it is supported by adding up the death toll that can, based on the available evidence, be attributed to the various sources of Jewish mortality due to Nazi violence during World War II.

The first report detailing Jewish population losses in Europe, "Statistics on Jewish Casualties During Axis Domination", was prepared by the Institute of Jewish Affairs in New York in June 1945. According to the table attached to this report, out of a total population of ca. 9,612,000 Jews living in the listed European countries (including the USSR) before Axis domination, between 3,825,000 and 3,889,000 were still alive, which meant a loss of 5,723,000 to 5,787,000 lives.

The estimated Jewish population in Europe at the end of World War II was also established by an Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry appointed in order to, among other tasks, "examine the position of the Jews in those countries in Europe where they have been the victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution …". In Appendix III to the committee’s report, which was completed in Lausanne/Switzerland in April 1946, the committee listed the Jewish population in 1939 and the current number of survivors, divided into the categories "Native" and "Refugee and displaced", for two groups of European countries, those that had been under Axis domination and those that had not or not wholly (the USSR) been occupied or otherwise dominated by the Axis. In the first group, the committee established a total of 6,015,700 Jewish inhabitants in 1939 vs. 1,153,106 remaining after the war, i.e. a loss of 4,862,594. In the second group, the corresponding subtotals were 3,930,600, 3,071,600 and 859,000. The totals for Europe were 9,946,300 Jews in 1939 and 4,224,700 after the war, the difference being 5,721,600.

Jewish population losses in Europe were also the subject of various later studies, some of which are mentioned hereafter.

Gerald Reitlinger arrived at a total between 4,204,400 and 4,575,400 dead, which he himself didn't consider final, however. His figures for Rumania (pre-1940 frontier), Poland and the USSR (pre-1939 frontier plus Baltic States) carry the following remark "* Owing to the lack of reliable information at the time of writing, these figures must be regarded as conjectural".

Raul Hilberg concluded on a total of 5,100,000 Jewish victims of Nazi persecution and mass murder. His study is notable in that it is the first and (as far as I know) the only to offer a breakdown of the death toll by country, by year and by cause of death.

Reitlinger and Hilberg had limited if any access to data from the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe that were behind the Iron Curtain at the time they wrote their books, and this affected the accuracy of their estimates especially as concerns the Nazi-occupied territories of the former Soviet Union. The first study about Jewish population losses that appeared following the demise of the Soviet Union was the volume Dimensionen des Völkermords, edited by Wolfgang Benz et al, which was first published in 1991. This volume consists of studies on each individual country affected by the Nazis persecution and genocide of the Jews. As concerns the territories of the USSR within its borders as of 22 June 1941 (the date of on which the German attack began), i.e. including the Baltic Countries, Eastern Poland and Romanian territories annexed by the USSR in 1939/40, the estimates of historian Gert Robel point to about 2.2 million Jews who were still alive on the territory of the Soviet Union in 1945, out of a population of 5.1 million on the eve of the German attack. More recent data mentioned by German historian Hans-Heinrich Nolte (Kleine Geschichte Russlands, page 257) point to a similar result. According to Nolte, there were 5.1 million Jews on Soviet territory on 22 June 1941 (3.1 million in 1939, 1.8 million in the annexed western territories, 200,000 who fled across the Bug from German-occupied Poland), thereof 2.7 million who fell under German rule. Of these 100,000 survived, 20,000 as partisans and maybe 80,000 in concentration camps in Germany, and 2.6 million were murdered. About 300,000 Jews fell as soldiers of the Red Army or succumbed to famine behind the front line, and about 100,000 Jewish children were born during the war, so that at the war’s end there were about 2.3 million Jewish survivors in the USSR and the total loss of life was 2.6 + 0.3 = 2.9 million. Nolte’s figures are mentioned here.

The data contained in Benz et al's volume are well substantiated as concerns Jewish losses in each individual country examined, but care is advised in adding up the figures for each country to a Europe-wide total. The addition made by Benz himself in the book's introduction, which leads to a total of over 6 million dead, contains figures that are considered in more than one country study and are thus counted double, e.g. as concerns Jewish victims on Romanian territory annexed by Hungary following the 1940 Vienna Award. These double-counts can be weeded out, however, and this was done by my fellow blogger, British historian Dr. Nick Terry. The results of his study, published on the reference thread Number of Victims of the Holocaust of the Axis History Forum, are the following:

Victims of the German 'Final Solution of the European Jewish Question'

Germany 150,000
Austria 48,767
Luxemburg 720
Netherlands 100,000
Belgium 23,484
France 76,134
Denmark 116
Norway 758
Finland 8 German refugees handed over
Italy 6,513
Albania 591
Greece 59,185
Yugoslavia: 65,000
Hungary 410,000+ (1940 borders)
Czech Republic 77,297(1940 borders)
Slovakia 66,000 (1940 borders)
Romania 120,919 (1940 borders)
Estonia 1,000
Latvia 77,000
Lithuania 140,000 (1939 borders)
USSR 1,050,000 (1939 borders
- Belorussian SSR 250,000 (1939 borders)
- Ukrainian SSR 656,000 (1939 borders)
- Russian SFSR 144,000
Poland 2,890,000 (1939 borders)
- western Poland 1,600,000 (German occupation from 1939)
- eastern Poland 1,210,000
- Wilno district 80,000
Total 5,364,492 as a minimum


Like all its predecessors, this study has been subject to reasonable criticism. As in all previous cases, however, such criticism refers to the accuracy of certain figures for individual countries (in this case the figure for the Russian SFSR, which another fellow blogger, Sergey Romanov, considered way too high). No reasonable criticism has been raised against the overall order of magnitude, which – assuming that Sergey is right about the Russian figures – approaches the one estimated by Hilberg. All country figures underlying either of these estimates are based on a multitude of documentary and demographic evidence, and all aforementioned sources established the death toll of European Jewry by adding up the Jewish losses in all countries assessed. The results of these additions are furthermore borne out by substantiated estimates, based on detailed assessments of documentary and other evidence, of the numbers killed in ghettos, camps and open-air shootings.

That being so, the most that Mr. "Dalton" can reasonably argue, if his pre-1945 references to a "6 million" figure of Jews living in misery or threatened by annihilation are not the result of cherry-picking, is that these references are one of the reasons why the higher and not the lower end of estimates about the Jewish death toll – 6 million and not 5 million – is more frequently mentioned in the media, in political statements and in often non-scholarly secondary sources. My comment to this would be: so what?

(5) Of course, this would not affect the other main problem with the ‘6 million,’ namely, that we find no breakdown of this figure in any conventional source. This strongly suggests that no one really understands this number, which is so vital to the entire story. Hilberg is the only one to provide details for the 3 main categories—ghettos, shootings, and camps—but he finds only 5.1 million deaths, and even these are unsubstantiated. Here is my proposal for the traditionalists: ghettos 1.0 million, shootings 1.7 million, camps 3.3 million. Do Roberto and Andrew wish to defend these numbers? Or do they have others? Once they decide, then we can begin a serious analysis.


Mr. "Dalton" seems to labor under the assumption that Andrew and I belong to what Kevin Barrett ironically called the "'six million Jews died and not a Jew less' crowd". I have no idea what could have Mr. "Dalton" to this conclusion, other than his desire to be in a more disadvantageous debating position. There is no breakdown of 6 million by causes of death that I know of, and Wolfgang Benz' addition of country-by-country demographic data, which turns out more than 6 million, is affected by double-counting, as I pointed out above. Even if that were not so, it would still be wrong to equate demographic losses with the sum of "Dalton"’s "3 main categories", for demographic losses obviously also include Jewish soldiers of various armed forces and Jewish civilians who lost their lives due to war-related causes – 300,000 in these two categories in the Soviet Union alone, as I mentioned before. As concerns breakdowns by the "three categories", my idea would be the following:

• Ghettoization and general occupation – as per Hilberg’s estimate (ca. 800,000).
• Camps – about 2,797,000, broken down as follows:
- Belzec: According to a document that became available in the British Public Records Office in 2000, the intercepted and decoded 14-day-report about "Einsatz Reinhart" that was sent on 11 January 1943 by SS-Sturmbannführer Höfle in Lublin to SS-Obersturmbannführer Heim of the BdS office in Krakow (hereinafter referred to as the Höfle Report), the number of Jews deported to Belzec in 1942 was 434,508. Round figure: 435,000.
- Sobibor: a minimum figure of ca. 150,000 was established by a court in Hagen, Germany, based on deportation evidence assessed by court expert Dr. Scheffler (see my article Meet Karl Frenzel (1)). Later historical research showed the Hagen court's estimate to be too low, the currently accepted range being 160,000 – 200,000 (Julian Shelvis, Sobibor. A History of a Nazi Death Camp, page 198; Dieter Pohl, Verfolgung und Massenmord in der NS-Zeit 1933-1945, page 95). In a recent expert opinion provided at the trial of John Demjanjuk in Munich, Pohl gave an estimate of about 170,000 Jews killed at Sobibor. I’ll stick with that.
- Treblinka: On the basis of the Höfle Report and additional data for 1943, Polish historian Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk estimates the minimum death toll of Treblinka as 780,863. Round figure: 781,000.
- Chelmno: The minimum death toll established by by a West German court in 1963 is about 152,000.
- Auschwitz-Birkenau: about 900,000, according to Franciszek Piper’s detailed documentary research outlined in the Van Pelt Report, as corrected by recent research finds of German historians Christian Gerlach and Götz Aly.
- Majdanek: 2005 research by the Head of Scientific Department at Majdanek Museum, historian Tomasz Kranz, indicates that there were 78,000 victims, 59,000 of whom were Jews.
- Janowska forced labor camp in Lemberg: about 100,000.
- Maly Trostinec camp in Belorussia: about 60,000.
- Other camps: about 140,000. Hilberg’s estimates for other camps add up to 300,000, from which I deducted the figures for Janowska and Maly Trostinec, assuming these were taken into consideration by Hilberg.
• Mobile killing operations: the overwhelming majority of the about 2.6 million killed from among the Jewish population of the Soviet Union as of 22 June 1941 (i.e. including the Baltic Countries and the territories of Eastern Poland and Romania annexed by the Soviets) fell victim to mobile killing operations. The main positions to be deducted from this figure are about 255,000 from Galicia deported to extermination camps (Sandkühler, Endlösung in Galizien, as quoted in my blog Belzec Mass Graves and Archaeology: My Response to Carlo Mattogno (5,2)), Jews deported from the Bialystok District to Treblinka (about 120,000, according to Yitzhak Arad – I added up the figures for the Bialystok District), and the about 160,000 victims of the Janowska and Maly Trostinets camp mentioned above. Let’s deduct another 150,000 to take account of further deportations to camps from the occupied Soviet territories, even though this number seems too high to me, and we got at least about 1.9 million victims of mobile killing operations in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, which saw the bulk of such operations. Gas vans are likely to have accounted for only the smaller part of these victims, considering what German historian Christian Gerlach wrote about their efficiency in his book Kalkulierte Morde, pages 766 f. (my translation):

It is not possible to establish the number of Belorussian people killed in gas vans. A perpetrator mentioned 20,000 to 30,000 Jews who were murdered in Minsk during his time. In fact the operational conditions in Belorussia led to the large majority of Jews and other victims being murdered not by gas but by shooting. For the gas vans' killing capacity was too low for the killers’ purposes. In one van about 350 to 400 people could be murdered in one day. Most Belorussian Jews, however, died during large massacres in which up to 10,000 people were wiped out within one or two days; with three or four as vans this would not have been possible. Also for the annihilation of transports with Jewish deportees numbering 1,000 people – one of the gas vans' main functions in the GK Weißruthenien - three vans seemed too little, so that a fourth was ordered. For outside operations during extermination actions in the ghettos of the smaller, often remote little towns the gas vans were also not adequate for two reasons: due to the high risk of defects on the bad roads and due to possible partisan attacks. Such outside operations were accordingly rare, especially in the context of anti-partisan fighting. Seldom were the vans from different locations put together, and then only for actions at central places. Besides, other reasons against the use of gas vans were invoked.
Thus the gassing vehicles were primarily used directly at the places where they were stationed, for two tasks: first for the regular emptying of prisons, i.e. for murdering prisoners from labor or death camps (like in the Minsk Shirokaia Street), who had mostly been selected as unable to work, for instance for the murder of 3,000 ostensibly unproductive "bandit suspects" (old people, women and children) from the Polozk area in Trostinez in February 1943, and second for exterminating the Jew transports arriving from central Europe in 1942.
.

Gerlach refers to Belorussia, i.e. only one of the Nazi-occupied Soviet areas. But his assessment suggests that if the Nazis killed 200,000 Jews in gas vans throughout all occupied Soviet territories, that's a lot. Even with this improbably high deduction, the figure for mass shootings in those territories would be about 1.7 million.

The sum toll of persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazis would thus be roughly the following:

• 800,000 from ghettoization and general occupation
• 2,800,000 in camps
• 1,900,000 in mobile killing operations, by shooting or gas vans
• 5,500,000 in total.

On to Mr. "Dalton"'s point (6).

(6) Roberto says that Hilberg is too low on his Einsatzgruppen shootings number (1.4 million). Andrew cites the recent Desbois book, Holocaust by Bullets, which claims 1.5 million. What neither of them mentioned is that we have not nearly enough forensic evidence to support such numbers. Desbois found (allegedly) 800 “mass graves” in the East, but have absolutely no useful data on these graves: size, area, location, corpse count, ash quantity—nothing. The Nazi reports that Ricardo relies on add up to only about 450,000 (so where are the other 1 million?), but we can be sure there is significant error and exaggeration even in these, if only because have, again, no evidence of any such mass killings.


Regarding my take on the toll of mobile killing operations (which, contrary to what Mr. "Dalton" seems to be assuming, were not carried out only by Einsatzgruppen and their auxiliaries), see my above response to Mr. "Dalton"'s point (5). In response to point (6) I’ll address the various misconceptions and falsities included in that point.

a) "Not nearly enough forensic evidence":

Mr. "Dalton" is invited to explain what exactly he means by "forensic evidence" and to quote any rules or standards of evidence applied in criminal investigation or historiography whereby counting or estimating the toll of mass murder requires such "forensic evidence" and may not rely only or mainly on demographic data, documents and eyewitness testimonies.

Next he should make us a list of at least five murderous events or connected series of events claiming at least half a million victims, the generally accepted order of magnitude of which he accepts as accurate, and for each of these events show us or guide us to the "forensic evidence" that made him accept as accurate the generally accepted order of magnitude of such mass murders.

After that, I would kindly ask him to reveal what he would consider "nearly enough forensic evidence" in our context, and what "forensic evidence" he considers to be in known. This is to rule out the possibility that his assessment is based on insufficient research.

b) "Add up to only about 450,000 (so where are the other 1 million?)"

Mr. Dalton is requested to tells us how he arrived at the figure 450,000 regarding the "reports that Ricardo relies on" (I guess he means the Einsatzgruppen reports, which cover only part of the period in which mobile killing operations were carried out in the occupied Soviet territories, and only one set of units involved therein). Consider what Raul Hilberg wrote in this respect (The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985 student edition by Holmes and Meier, page 153):

Ostland and Army Group Rear Areas North and Center
An Einsatzgruppe A draft report (winter 1941-42) listed the following figures of Jews killed:
Estonia 2,000
Latvia 70,000
Lithuania 136,421
White Russia 41,000
Einsatzgruppe B reported on September 1, 1942 a toll of 126,195.
Ukraine, Bialystok, Army Group Rear Area South, and Rear Area Eleventh Army:
Einsatzgruppe C reported that two of its Kommandos (4a and 5) had killed 95,000 people up to the beginning of December 1941. Einsatzgruppe D reported on April 8, 1942, a total of 91,678 dead.
.

Hilberg's figures add up to 562,294, if my math is correct.

c) "But we can be sure there is significant error and exaggeration even in these"

Mr. Dalton should lead us to the sources claiming that "there is significant error and exaggeration even in these" – unless he prefers to first read the last five blogs of the series That's why it is denial, not revisionism. and drop this old herring right away.

d) "If only because have, again, no evidence of any such mass killings"

This remark leads us to the more general question, related to the requests under item a) above, what Mr. "Dalton" would accept as evidence and what not and what rules or standards of evidence other than his irrelevant own his distinction is based on. As concerns matching Soviet investigations of physical evidence with other evidence independent of the Soviets, Mr. "Dalton" is invited to read Dr. Terry's blog Mass Graves in the Polesie and my blog Neither the Soviets nor the Poles have found any mass graves with even only a few thousand bodies ….

Coming up next:
III. Policy

15 comments:

  1. (This comment really belongs here)

    Its complete Chutzpah to use the Korherr report to support extermination. In the short version it has the following:

    " Die Ver-
    minderung des Judentums in Europa dürfte damit bereits an
    4 Millionen Köpfe betragen. Höhere Judenbestände zählen auf
    dem europ. Kontinent (neben Rußland mit etwa 4 Mill.) nur noch
    Ungarn (750 000) und Rumänien (302 000), vielleicht noch
    Frankreich."

    "High Jewish numbers counted in the European continent (besides Russia with around 4 million) now only Hungary 750000 and Rumania 302 000, perhaps also France."

    What a strange coincidence, the Germans announce a large forced emigration program and 4 million Jews turn up in Russia.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, that's not what he's saying.

    He's saying that four million Jews are already dead, and there's probably another four million in Russia, 750,000 in Hungary, 300,000 in Romania, and probably some left in France (because of the Vichy government not being under direct Nazi administration).

    Those four million in Russia were already there. And you can check the Wannsee Protokol see them numbered there. That number is actually *down* from a larger number present there at the beginning of the century.

    Nice try though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. If he is saying that in mid 1943 there were 4 million Jews in Russia on the other side of the front line, then there goes everyone supposedly killed by the Einsatzgruppen.

    As for this
    "He's saying that four million Jews are already dead"

    He most certainly is not.
    He is saying for the Altreich there was
    560 000 voluntary (sic) emigration
    80 000 excess deaths over births
    220 000 Evakuierung

    For the former Polish areas he says he cant determine what proportion was voluntary (sic) emigration and what was excess deaths but combined the number is 760 000
    From these regions there is also 1 500 000 Evakuierung

    From the other occupied countries he estimates 845 000 Evakuierung

    This total comes up to 4 million.

    You are saying that Evakuierung means death. In which case, bizarrely, you have two death columns. The Evakuierung in total comes up to 2.500 000. To that you can add the 600 000 mentioned as "evakuiert" in the longer report in the former USSR, plus those in the unconquered areas adds up nicely to around 4 million

    ReplyDelete
  4. Its complete Chutzpah to use the Korherr report to support extermination. In the short version it has the following:

    " Die Ver-
    minderung des Judentums in Europa dürfte damit bereits an
    4 Millionen Köpfe betragen. Höhere Judenbestände zählen auf
    dem europ. Kontinent (neben Rußland mit etwa 4 Mill.) nur noch
    Ungarn (750 000) und Rumänien (302 000), vielleicht noch
    Frankreich."

    "High Jewish numbers counted in the European continent (besides Russia with around 4 million) now only Hungary 750000 and Rumania 302 000, perhaps also France."

    What a strange coincidence, the Germans announce a large forced emigration program and 4 million Jews turn up in Russia.


    It just happens that there were 2,570,330 Jews in "Russia" already in 1926, according to Korherr's count. This didn't include the Baltic countries Latvia (93,479 Jews in 1935, according to Korherr) and Lithuania (155,125 Jews in 1923, according to Korherr), later incorporated in the Soviet Union. Incorporation of Eastern Poland and parts of Romania in 1940 further swelled the Jewish population of the USSR, to 5.1 million as of 22 June 1941 according to historians Robel and Nolte. All this happened prior to the German invasion and had nothing to do with the Nazis "evacuation" or "transportation to the Russian East". Then the bunny's heroes entered the Soviet Union and proceeded with the reduction of that country's Jewish population.

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  5. If he is saying that in mid 1943 there were 4 million Jews in Russia on the other side of the front line, then there goes everyone supposedly killed by the Einsatzgruppen.

    If he is saying in mid-1943 that there were 4 million Jews in Russia on the other side of the front line, his estimate is way to high. The number of Jews who didn't fall into German hands was just about 2.4 million according to Nolte.

    As for this
    "He's saying that four million Jews are already dead"

    He most certainly is not.
    He is saying for the Altreich there was
    560 000 voluntary (sic) emigration
    80 000 excess deaths over births
    220 000 Evakuierung

    For the former Polish areas he says he cant determine what proportion was voluntary (sic) emigration and what was excess deaths but combined the number is 760 000
    From these regions there is also 1 500 000 Evakuierung

    From the other occupied countries he estimates 845 000 Evakuierung

    This total comes up to 4 million.

    You are saying that Evakuierung means death. In which case, bizarrely, you have two death columns. The Evakuierung in total comes up to 2.500 000. To that you can add the 600 000 mentioned as "evakuiert" in the longer report in the former USSR, plus those in the unconquered areas adds up nicely to around 4 million.


    Utter nonsense. Korherr says that the Jewish population of Europe went down by 4 million since 1937 and by 5 million since 1933. Of these 5 million that have been lost to European Jewry since, 2.5 million didn't go to other continents, according to Korherr. That means he considers them dead. The 2.5 million order of magnitude tallies with the with the sum of

    i) excess mortality in the Old Reich, the Ostmark (Austria) and the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia according to chapter II of the "long" version (82,776, thereof 61,193 in the Old Reich including the Sudetengau and Danzig, 14,509 in the Ostmark and 7,074 in the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia);

    ii) mortality in the Theresienstadt ghetto according to item 1 of chapter VI of the "long" version (reduction from 87,193 to 49,392, "mainly by deaths"); and

    iii) "evacuations" until 31.12.1942 according to chapters V and VI of the "long" version, except for items 1 ("Evacuation of Jews from Baden and the Palatinate to France") and 3 ("Evacuation of Jews from the Reich area and the Protectorate to Theresienstadt"), as detailed hereafter:

    1. Greater Germany: 124,051
    1a. (thereof German Reich including Sudetenland)(1): 60,763
    1b. (thereof Austria) (2): 33,333
    1c. (thereof Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia)(3): 29,955
    2. Belgium: 16,886
    3. France: 41,911
    4. Norway: 532
    5. Yugoslavia: 4,927
    6. Netherlands: 38,571
    7. Former Polish Republic: 1,496,283
    7a. (thereof "Eastern Provinces"): 1,449,692
    7b (thereof Bialystok District) (4): 46,591
    8. Slovakia: 56,691
    9. Soviet Union incl. Baltic Republics: 633,300
    SUM TOTAL: 2,413,152

    The difference between the 2.5 million he considered dead and those he considered lost to Jewish population stock in total - 4 million since 1937, 5 million since 1933 - is an educated guess including both known emigration numbers and categories for which Korherr had no precise figures, like deaths of Soviet Russian Jews in the "occupied eastern territories" not included in his tabulations, deaths in the rest of European Russia and at the front, movements of Jews inside Russia to the Asian part thereof, Jewish emigration and Jewish excess mortality in the states of central and western Europe other than Germany. As concerns deaths, Korherr apparently chose to stay on the safe side of what his detailed figures added up to.

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  6. As to the bunny's "there goes everyone supposedly killed by the Einsatzgruppen", he may try to explain this:

    That Korherr was aware of tabulating mass murder also becomes apparent from further parts of his report. Thus, under item 6 of chapter V on page 9 of the "long" version, he wrote the following (my translation):

    6. In addition, according to data from
    the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
    there is the evacuation of... 633 300 Jews
    in the Russian territories
    incl. the former Baltic
    countries since the beginning of the
    Eastern Campaign.

    How the Jews could have conceivably been evacuated in the Russian territories, the claimed destination of most other "evacuees" mentioned in this chapter, Korherr did not explain. And if this alone didn’t already make clear what said "evacuation" meant, Korherr spelled it out in the final chapter X of the "long" version, where he wrote the following (my translation and emphases):

    It must not be overlooked in this respect that of the deaths of Soviet Russian Jews in the occupied Eastern territories only a part was recorded, whereas deaths in the rest of European Russia and at the front are not included at all.

    The only other place in the "long" version where Korherr mentioned Soviet Russian Jews was the above-quoted item 6 of chapter V on page 9, so it is clear that the term "evacuation" in that item means nothing other than "deaths of Soviet Russian Jews" in the passage quoted immediately above, Korherr pointing out that the figure of such deaths given to him by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt was only a partial figure.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. > Roberot

    One more "slip up" like that and you're out forever, little bunny.

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  9. What a song and dance over a typo. Does this keep you happy?

    littlegrey said...

    "The number of Jews who didn't fall into German hands was just about 2.4 million according to Nolte."

    Muhahaha, I love it how Hoaxsters fall back on Nolte when it suits them.

    However, I agree with Nolte. So that leaves us with 3 options

    1. When Korherr said in June 1943 that there were 4 million Jews in Russia he was gabbling meaningless nonsense

    2. He was referring to Jews on both sides of the front line

    3. He was referring to Jews outside Europe but in German occupied USSR - I am looking at eastern Ukraine at the moment, but always open to suggestions.

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  10. "However, I agree with Nolte. So that leaves us with 3 options

    1. When Korherr said in June 1943 that there were 4 million Jews in Russia he was gabbling meaningless nonsense"


    He may have overestimated, which is not "meaningless nonsense" such as the bunny gabbles. It's just an overestimate.

    "2. He was referring to Jews on both sides of the front line."

    Hardly so, as the Jews on the German side of the frontline in the occupied territories of the USSR were mostly dead by the time. It should also be taken into account that Korherr mentions Russia along with Hungary and Romania, two countries where Jews were outside Germany's reach at the time.

    "3. He was referring to Jews outside Europe but in German occupied USSR - I am looking at eastern Ukraine at the moment, but always open to suggestions."

    Korherr's ten million figure for Europe obviously included the USSR, of which the Germans only occupied the European part anyway. Besides, he is expressly referring to the European continent when mentioning "Russia", which also suggests that he considers all of Russia "European" for this purpose.

    That leaves alternative 1 as the likeliest. Korherr simply overestimated the number of Jews outside German reach in the Soviet Union.

    Now, if the bunny could answer my question in the previous post, that would be good.

    And if he could explain what Korherr could possibly considered to have happened to 2.5 million Jews who had a) been lost to the European Jewish population of 10 million in 1937 but b) not moved to continents other than Europe, that would be even better. They were not there anymore but they hadn't moved out either - so what had happened to them?

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  11. My my, what a messy report Korherr is supposed to have written and how many knots we have to tie ourselves into to fit into a extermination narrative. I mean look how way off he was with the Auschwitz numbers!

    However, the Rabbit never ducks a challenge. You asked
    "And if he could explain what Korherr could possibly considered to have happened to 2.5 million Jews who had a) been lost to the European Jewish population of 10 million in 1937 but b) not moved to continents other than Europe, that would be even better."

    Korherr said this:
    "Dazu kommen die Wanderungsströme der Juden innerhalb
    Russlands in den asiatischen Bereich hinüber. Auch der Wan-
    derungsstrom der Juden aus den europäischen Ländern außer-
    halb des deutschen Einflußbereichs nach Übersee ist eine
    weitgehend unbekannte Größe"

    So the remaining Jews are not in the Asia areas of Russia and not in Europe.

    That leaves the rolling steppes of eastern Ukraine

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  12. "However, the Rabbit never ducks a challenge. You asked
    "And if he could explain what Korherr could possibly considered to have happened to 2.5 million Jews who had a) been lost to the European Jewish population of 10 million in 1937 but b) not moved to continents other than Europe, that would be even better."

    Korherr said this:
    "Dazu kommen die Wanderungsströme der Juden innerhalb
    Russlands in den asiatischen Bereich hinüber. Auch der Wan-
    derungsstrom der Juden aus den europäischen Ländern außer-
    halb des deutschen Einflußbereichs nach Übersee ist eine
    weitgehend unbekannte Größe"

    So the remaining Jews are not in the Asia areas of Russia and not in Europe.

    That leaves the rolling steppes of eastern Ukraine"


    The rolling steppes of eastern Ukraine are part of Europe from any point of view, IIRC.

    And for those 2.5 million Korherr has a rather precise breakdown, as I pointed out in an earlier post. He is certainly not including them in the bunny's "Wanderungsströme".

    I wouldn't even call that a nice try.

    Jews on the rolling steppes of eastern Ukraine

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  13. "
    The rolling steppes of eastern Ukraine are part of Europe from any point of view, IIRC. "

    Actually you will find that the very meaning of Ukraine is "Borderlands"

    He does have a precise breakdown of these 2.5 million indeed......these 2.5 million are all described as evacuated.

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  14. "The rolling steppes of eastern Ukraine are part of Europe from any point of view, IIRC. "

    Actually you will find that the very meaning of Ukraine is "Borderlands"


    Still Europe, bunny. No carrot.

    "He does have a precise breakdown of these 2.5 million indeed......these 2.5 million are all described as evacuated."

    Some are described as excess mortality, actually. Regarding others (the ones evacuated "in" the occupied Soviet territories, for which only a part of the number of deaths is known to Korherr), evacuation obviously means death. And all those 2.5 million were lost to Europe's Jewry without ever leaving Europe.

    Korherr left the term "Sonderbehandlung" standing in one place in the report, by the way - contrary to instructions received. He must have overlooked it when rewriting the document:

    Evakuierungen insgesamt(einschl.
    Theresienstadt und einschl.
    Sonderbehandlung)............
    1 873 549 Juden
    ohne Theresienstadt..........
    1 786 356 "

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  15. This is ludicrous. The Holocaust has been dissected time and time again, in history books and trials.

    The Korherr report does mention the decline in the number of Jews in the 3 Baltic states -- which the Nazis were occupying at the time!

    Himmler changed the language of Korherr's report to present it to Hitler, who already is known to have ordered Euthanasia. The Doctors and staff who practiced this method of destroying life were the ones sent to the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps. There is nothing to prove or disprove.

    Ausrottung, meaning extirpation or extermination. But it doesn't mean "evacuation " because there was nowhere to send the Jews and other victims to! The doctors were already tried on their use of poison gases (plural) and phenol injections. Over 40 ss men testified to the gassings, as did the staff of "I.G. Farben" which produced the stuff.

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