Take the word “exterminate”. What if I were to tell you that based on the Latin origins of ex (out of) and terminus (borders), it actually means “deport”?
Think that’s ridiculous? Welcome to the asinine world of Holocaust denial etymology, of which the above analogy (courtesy of The Holocaust History Project) is a comparable example of how deniers prefer to read part of a speech that SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler gave to a gathering of senior SS officers in occupied Posen on October 4, 1943. The section in question is as follows:
I am talking about the “Jewish evacuation”: the extermination of the Jewish people.
It is one of those things that is easily said. ‘The Jewish people is being exterminated,’ every Party member will tell you, ‘perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we’re doing it…’
Needless to say, Himmler doesn’t exactly leave much to the imagination. Unless, of course, you’re a Holocaust denier.
Key to this speech for deniers is Himmler’s lexical choice, where the operative words regarding “exterminate” and “extermination” are ausrotten and Ausrottung. Unsurprisingly, deniers offer far less sinister translations, such as evacuation in a non-euphemistical sense, or “rooting out” on the basis that the German aus and rotten are cognate with the English “out” and “root”.
There are a number of reasons why such figurative interpretations are wrong (not least because, well, even native German deniers say so), and it will become apparent that to dwell on any of them is a complete waste of time anyway, but first of all, let’s consider the context in which Himmler made his remarks. How tenable is it, that the Judenevakuierung is merely the innocuous movement of European Jews across the continent by the SS?
Key to one’s understanding of their transportation across the continent comes from the Höfle Telegram, a highly significant message sent by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle to SS Lieutenant Colonels Adolf Eichmann and Franz Heim regarding deportations to Operation Reinhard camps: Lublin (Majdanek), Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. As of 1942, 1,274,166 Jews were sent to them. The figures may be arranged as follows:
Lublin - 24733
Belzec - 434508
Sobibor - 101370
Treblinka - 713555*
(British decoders missed a five on the figure for Treblinka, which, when added, yields the correct total.)
Let’s consider Belzec. Regarding the impression that Hoefle gave SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Türk about it on March 16, 1942, Christopher Browning writes that:
…the German documents make clear that tens of thousands of Jews were being sent to the camp at Belzec in the spring months of 1942. There was no pretense that this was a work camp, for only non-working Jews were sent there. There was no pretense that such numbers of Jews could all remain in Belzec, in a tiny village guarded by a mere 60 men. Thus the explanation given by the SS was that these Jews were “expelled over the Bug,” that is sent across the border into the district of Galicia, with the guarantee that they would never return.
Browning informs us that the Bug River was:
…the demarcation line between the German and Soviet occupation zones in 1939-41 and formed the boundary between the districts of Lublin and Galicia thereafter.
As Browning elaborates, the impression that Höfle gave Türk, in that Jews sent to Belzec would “cross over the border and would never return again to the General Government” was not entirely accurate.
Then again, as all but 2 of the 434,508+ people sent to Belzec disappeared following their deportation, and that there are 33 mass graves where the camp stood with an estimated surface of 21 square kilometres, in one way it was: those sent there did indeed not return.
What was the fate of those sent to Treblinka? SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop explains in his report that 6,929 Jews were:
…destroyed by transport to T. II
(Treblinka was two camps - Treblinka I was a forced labour camp and Treblinka II was the extermination centre.)
Also worth mentioning is the October 10, 1942 entry to the War Diary of the Oberquartiermeister of the military commander in Poland, where:
OK Ostrow reports that the Jews in Treblinka are not adequately buried and as a result an unbearable smell of cadavers pollutes the air.
So, according to the Nazis, those sent to Treblinka are being a) destroyed and the resulting smell is b) offensive to those almost twenty kilometres away. The notion that these facts can be related to a harmless transit camp simply boggles the mind.
A frequently heard claim by deniers is that the Nazis could not have justified an extermination program because of its economical demands. But when one considers Article 2 of the Nuremburg Laws that:
1. The property of a Jew shall be confiscated by the Reich after his death.
…and that on January 5, 1944, the head of Operation Reinhard SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik submitted a report to Himmler stating that the operation collected 178,745,960.59 Reichsmarks worth of money, precious metal and textiles from Jews, they didn’t need to. It justified itself - to the tune of $850,000,000 to $900,000,000 at the very least [adjusted for inflation].
Globocnik assumed “minimum values”, writing that the total value “probably reaches twice as much”. It is simply ridiculous to consider the camps of Operation Reinhard as benign ports of passage that Jews passed through unmolested, when they yielded up to 1.7 to 1.8 billion dollars worth of valuables plundered from deportees.
One could continue ad nauseum discussing how Holocaust denial is an academic dead end. It is a prejudice, a prejudgment, in that a conclusion has been formed regardless of what contradicts that conclusion. This is precisely why pseudodemographer Walter N. Sanning in his book The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry chooses not to to discuss the report compiled by Richard Korherr, the Inspector for Statistics. (Hat-tip to the Holocaust Controversies blog for this terrific post.)
- Firstly, because 1,274,166 and 145,301 Jews of were “specially treated” at camps in the General Government (those of Operation Reinhard) and those in the Warthegau (Chelmno). Special treatment was a widely known euphemism for killing, and in this instance it was too suggestive for Himmler, who ordered for it to be replaced with the even more vague durchgeschleust, meaning “processed” or “sifted through”. The significance of Höfle’s telegram becomes apparent here because the figure of 1,274,166 corresponds to it.
- Secondly, because Korherr concludes that half of the estimated 10 million Jews of Europe have been lost - only a quarter of which is likely to have gone to other continents.
Therefore, what happened to the other circa 2.5 million Jews that ceased to be part of European Jewry without leaving the continent?
In a speech made two days after the one he gave on October 4, Himmler is particularly revealing as to what their fate is:
We came to the question: How is it with the women and children? I decided to find a clear solution here as well. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men - in other words, to kill them or have them killed - and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth.
His original German of the part in bold is as follows:
…die Männer auszurotten - sprich also, umzubringen oder umbringen zu lassen…
And there we go: Himmler defines ausrotten with umbringen, a verb which has simply no meaning other than “to kill”. Jewish men, women and children - all of them are to be killed.
To conclude:
If you enjoyed this post, why not subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter? You might also consider making a donation to the Counterknowledge.com fighting fund.…’The Jewish people is being exterminated,’ every Party member will tell you, ‘perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we’re doing it…
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38 responses
Good post Will. I’ll submit one of my own talking about ENIGMA decrypts and Hofle’s messages - which you cite - in due course.
I do not expect, however, that this well-argued and researched piece will have the slightest effect on the scum that congregated around the Michael Santomauro post.
The truth about Holocaust:
1, 2, 4 or 6 million people not only Jews but 50 other nationalities including Germans and Austrians- the numbers dont really matter that much - what is really important is the fact that people can do such horrible things to others, thats why we cannot forget it and isolate those who deny it.
Respect for the Jews as it is their holy place, but on the other hand you cant glorify one thing and do something similar to other people like Palestinians, especially the Jews as our Older Brothers should give example to us Catholics or other religion followers how to live in peace how to be wise and share not how to be selfish and brutal towards others.
Today 20 April 2009, some celebrate birthday of Hitler, some watch Iranian president in Switzerland with enthusiasm and others leave the conference room or switch off tv, I am enjoying a warm sunny day in Dublin, Ireland - the model country to follow, people living in peace like the French people whom I love. Vive la France!
What Joseph said.
It’s important to note, too, that the Nazis had tried deporting the Jews and it had failed. The Germans were fighting an imperial war; what was the good of expelling Jews from your land if, some time down the line, you would occupy whichever country the Jews had fled to and you had to deport them all over again?
But Holocaust denial is a blanket of illogical nonsense and makes a mockery of history. To discuss the holocaust with deniers is to indulge them in the fantasy that they are engaged in intellectual discourse, when in fact they are like a dangerous breed of flat earther with an anit-semitic undercurrrent.
Camille: There is no doubt that the Jews were the principle target of the holocaust and the dead were numbered around the six million mark. I would agree that one shouldn’t simply ignore the additional 5 million victims of the Nazi death machine, including bolshevics, homosexuals, gypsies, Poles and other dissidents and enemies of the regime.
The fact remains that more than half the victims of the holocaust were victimised because they were Jews, and they were overwhelmingly the biggest victims out of any group.
Among the 5 million non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust were some of my Polish relatives, who were either shipped off to a camp or were lined up in front of a pit and shot. Tell me now that it didn’t happen
Excellent article.
Regarding non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murder, see my blogs under http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2008/04/5-million-non-jewish-victims.html and http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2008/04/5-million-non-jewish-victims-part-2.html . The 5 million figure was invented by Simon Wiesenthal. The actual number of non-Jewish victims was higher.
Bear in mind that the total toll for victims of Nazism would also include substantial numbers of Soviet citizens who died as a result of German occupation from 1941-1944 (although - as Robert Conquest showed - a significant portion of the Soviet war dead were actually caused by Stalin).
Thank you for the information Roberto. Your blogs are very well written. Should you have the patience, there are some deniers to butt heads with in the Santomoauro thread. Your articles exposing denier frauds will likely prove useful there.
I still respect Wiesenthal’s work as a Nazi hunter, and I don’t believe that the 5 million figure was born out of any means to diminish the tragedy of non-Jewish victims
‘I still respect Wiesenthal’s work as a Nazi hunter, and I don’t believe that the 5 million figure was born out of any means to diminish the tragedy of non-Jewish victims’.
Neither do I.
“Respect for the Jews as it is their holy place, but on the other hand you cant glorify one thing and do something similar to other people like Palestinians”
This article had nothing to do with Palestine or the state of Israel, but I find your equivocation deeply offensive. 5 million Jews - half of the Jewish population of Europe, were systematically exterminated over the course of half a decade, while the rest were stripped of their possessions and were lucky to escape with their lives. Palestine, in comparison, has had a 30% rise in population over the last decade alone. They receive regular shipments of aid from Israel as well as many other nations. Their citizens receive treatment in Israeli hospitals. They continue to grow, and their standard of living continue to improve (at a slow rate, but it does improve). Whatever hardships they face are primarily caused by the fact that they are a failed state in the midst of a struggle between multiple factions, all of which find it convenient to use Israel as a scapegoat.
Anyone who can draw a comparison between the two situations is either ignorant, or willfully blind. This type of demonization of the Jewish state is every bit as intellectually bankrupt as the holocaust denial which Mr. Henderson has so masterfully debunked.
My father’s name was Mark, and his entire family was wiped out by the Germans.
If his name had been Ibrahim, and his family had been wiped out in Shatila, or in Sabra, or in Deir Yassin, would I have the right to feel equally displeased?
“Respect for the Jews as it is their holy place, but on the other hand you cant glorify one thing and do something similar to other people like Palestinians.”
1) Nobody is doing “something similar” to the “Palestinians,” their numbers have increased exponentially since Israel’s re-establishment in 1948.
2) The “Palestinian” leadership was actively engaged in the Holocaust, in fact they should be paying reparations to Israel for their crimes:
———-
“The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan… He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chambers of Auschwitz.” - Dieter Wisliceny, Eichmann’s Assistant, Nuremberg
———-
Also, here’s an actual telegram from Himmler to the Mufti:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Himmler_to_Mufti_telegram_1943.png
They are all enemies, but who is more dangerous today, Hitler’s little servant the Mufti al-Husayni, who may have rejoiced when Hitler wiped out my father’s family, or the nice people, with clean hands, who insist they did nothing wrong to Ahmed’s family, over there in Shatila?
Matteo b: by the name, you are Italian. If so, please stop staining our nation with your repulsive Israel-baashing, which is less and less popular among anyone except Manifesto readers. Sabra and Chatila were not Israeli war crimes - they were Christian Lebanese war crimes committed in response to Muslim Lebanese war crimes (which the already corrupted international media did not report). There was no massacre in Jenin; that is an entirely invented story, as even the UN now accept. And even if we supposed that both these claims were true, you are comparing two events - the total of whose victims was less than two thousand (as much as the Nazis did in Marzabotto alone) - and that took place twenty years from each other, to six years of continuous and deliberate slaughter that deprived Europe of more than twenty million civilians. You did not answer Alex’ point that the so-called “palestinians” are growing rather than diminishing in numbers, that they are regularly cured in Israeli hospitals, and in fact kept alive by Israeli power and Israeli water and educated in Israeli-built schools and hospitals. Their idea of gratitude is suicide bombing - and you have the nerve to compare Israeli self-defence to Nazi aggression and mass murder. You sorry, disgusting piece of Jew-bashing trash, I wish that there was a way to make you cease to be Italian. Have you forgotten the tens of thousands of Italians, including eight thousand Jews, murdered by the Nazis? are your own fellow-countrymen so cheap to you, that you dare use them in a fraudulent and offensive comparison with “palestinian” terrorists and mass murderers? I sincerely hope you are not Italian, because if you are, you are repulsive.
Remarkable, the rhetoric of Mr. Barbieri is as sharp as that of Mr. Thames next door in the Santomauro thread.
I was not comparing the big job organized all over Europe 1941-1945 with the little job organized in Sabra and Shatila on September 17 and 18, 1982. I was just asking, what’s the difference, to the victims’ families.
When we say that Hitler killed six million, we include the Jews of Bosnia and Croatia, who were wiped out by the ustasha, on the initiative of the government of Pavelic. But Hitler put Pavelic in power, so Hitler shares the responsibility.
Similarly, Sharon gave the run of Sabra and Shatila to the Lebanese Christians, after the PLO were tricked by the West into leaving their families defenseless. The IDF was present, thus Israel is responsible.
And, by the way, the Italian Army in Yugoslavia behaved better, towards the Jews, than the IDF did towards the Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila.
Too bad Matteo limited himself to arabs living in countries at war with Israel. He overlooked the better comparison of arab-israeli citizens themselves, who serve and have served as supreme court justices, judges, lawyers, politicians, members of parliament (with different political parties and agenda), police, and even on the general staff of the army.
He also could have mentioned that arabic is mandatory in all schools, and is an official state language.
Or maybe he could have mentioned that israeli-arabs have the highest literacy rates in the arab world or that the trends in almost all areas of development since 1948 have shown improvements.
This is not to suggest that Israel’s treatment of arab minorities is without alot of criticism, just that the comparison to nazi germany is, like holocaust denial itself, not to be taken seriously.
The difference to the families of the victims has to do with the reactions of the citizens and governments. The nazis planned and ordered their killings so killing millions was not viewed as wrong. In Israel the negligence that lead to the massacre by the christians was greeted with contempt and punishment for the heads of the government defense and intelligence.
Topical this site ain’t. Still mulling over what the Nazis did? Sheesh! And CK seems wedded to low-rent journo habit of knocking easy targets that have already been comprehensively knocked.
Still nothing about the actual, genuine counterknowledge of the recently discredited science of international debt markets and exponential economic growth.
The writ of the ‘counterknowledge’ brief runs only to ideas shown to be apparently obviously wrong by previous commentators.
I get it now. It’s all about re-stating the bleedin’ obvious. It’s about being part of the right gang.
One cheer.
The “contempt and punishment” for Sharon did not go too far and did not last too long.
And it was not “negligence”, it was collaboration, as Robert Fisk tells us at http://www.counterpunch.org/fisksabra.html
‘Along the main road opposite the stadium there was a line of Israeli Merkava tanks, their crews sitting on the turrets, smoking, watching the men being led from the stadium in ones or twos, some being set free, others being led away by Shin Beth men or by Lebanese men in drab khaki overalls.All these soldiers knew what had happened inside the camps. One of the members of the tank crews, Lt Avi Grabovsky–he was later to testify to the Israeli Kahan commission–had even witnessed the murder of several civilians the previous day and had been told not to “interfere”.
And in the days that followed, strange reports reached us. A girl had been dragged from a car in Damour by Phalangist militiamen and taken away, despite her appeals to a nearby Israeli soldier. Then the cleaning lady of a Lebanese woman who worked for a US television chain complained bitterly that Israelis had arrested her husband. He was never seen again. There were other vague rumours of “disappeared” people.
I wrote in my notes at the time that “even after Chatila, Israel’s ‘terrorist’ enemies were being liquidated in West Beirut”. But I had not directly associated this dark conviction with the Cite Sportif. I had not even reflected on the fearful precedents of a sports stadium in time of war. Hadn’t there been a sports stadium in Santiago a few years before, packed with prisoners after Pinochet’s coup d’etat, a stadium from which many prisoners never returned?
Among the testimonies gathered by lawyers seeking to indict Ariel Sharon for war crimes is that of Wadha al-Sabeq. On Friday, 17 September 1982, she said, while the massacre was still (unknown to her) underway inside Sabra and Chatila, she was in her home with her family in Bir Hassan, just opposite the camps. “Neighbours came and said the Israelis wanted to stamp our ID cards, so we went downstairs and we saw both Israelis and Lebanese Forces [Phalangists] on the road. The men were separated from the women.” This separation–with its awful shadow of similar separations at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war–were a common feature of these mass arrests. “We were told to go to the Cite Sportif. The men stayed put.” Among the men were Wadha’s two sons, 19-year-old Mohamed and 16-year-old Ali and her brother Mohamed. “We went to the Cite Sportif, as the Israelis told us,” she says. “I never saw my sons or brother again.” ‘
Speaking personally, matteo, I’d take anything that Fisk tells you with more than a pinchful of salt. He does have a tendency for embellishment.
Well, sir, Fisk is here quoting witnesses.
Of course, I would certainly become suspicious if I were to be given examples of when did Fisk deceive his readers, or twist evidence to falsely impute atrocities upon the leaders of Algeria or Iraq or Siria or Croatia or Serbia or Muslim Bosnia, or upon the leaders of NATO countries.
I don’t know whether I find your comparison between Israel and the Nazis or your reliance on Robert Fisk as a source of information to be the more appalling.
Appalling indeed, to be told that one’s smiling, civil, pleasant, beloved leader is not so far from the evil monster who ruled over the neighbors. We have not as yet been given the subtle differences between Mi Lai, Marzabotto, and Shatila.
Neither have we been given three examples of Robert Fisk’s frauds and deceptions.
because there is no subtle difference, there’s a huge difference. Nazis were following set orders in massacring civilians whereas in mi lai and lebanon they were disobeying them.
Fisk is a synonym for journalistic lack of integrity - his name is used throughout the internet as a joke. In the article you quote, he wasn’t even an eyewitness reporter - he simply wrote a second hand report, from unknown people with who knows what agenda, and touched up the piece with his usual bias. The factual account of the sabra and shatila massacre was from eyewitness testimony before the kahan commission.
Precisely, witnesses at the Kahan Commission: “unknown people with who knows what agenda.” A pretty heavy agenda they had, their sons and husbands disappeared.
Mr. Thames would say they went to Russia, hiding in the Urals. Where is he now that we need him?
As for Shin Beth and the Phalangists disobeying orders, that’s probably true, the boys got carried away–they were supposed to kill men only, no young girls.
I’m not sure what your criticism of the kahan commission is. The witnesses were identified and there is an appendix with their names. They represented lebanese of different parties, foreign aid workers, IDF personnel, intelligence personnel and elected officials.
Shin bet is israeli domestic police. I never said the Phalangists were disobeying orders, in fact, testimony before the commission indicated that the phalangi were following their commanders’ orders.
Sorry, wrong again, I thought the Kahan Commission allowed the relatives of the disappeared to testify. I guess that Fisk was the first to speak to them, and reported it, without names, for obvious reasons. I suppose that’s why they hate him so much. By the way, Amnesty International also does not name its sources.
But Kahan allowed soldiers to appear. Lieutenant Grabowski saw a group of five women and children being killed. He was advised that the complaint had already been made by IDF soldiers and that the answer had been, “We know, it’s not to our liking, and don’t interfere.”
I dont follow your criticism of the kahan commission: that they didn’t allow victim representatives to testify and Fisk was the first to interview them (19 years later I should add) or that the commission did allow the testimony, or that they shouldn’t have an appendix with witnesses names?
What is the purpose behind quoting the Grabowski testimony?
Kahan “allowed soldiers to appear” is not quite how I would phrase being ordered to appear before a government inquiry headed by the supreme court head of a country.
When Ron wrote of “unknown people with who knows what agenda” I thought he meant victims’ parents who appeared in front of Kahan. But he says they did not appear, and I accept that. I had no criticism of the Kahan commission. But Ron has more complains: now it is that Fisk was 19 years late in his reports.
I doubt that Fisk did not publish the story at once–but suppose he hadn’t, would that alter its truth or falsity? Primo Levi was freed in January 1945. La tregua was published in 1963. Eighteen years later. So?
This nitpicking and arguing irrelevant details is the same strategy used by Turkish apologists in regard to Kurdish, Greek, and Armenian massacres. Serb, Croat, and Muslim apologists in Bosnia use it. French or U.S. or Russian apologists love it. That strategy is the foundation of Holocaust denial: to deflect our attention from the presence at the murder scene and the bloody hands, and to instruct the idiot jury that they must concentrate on the bloody glove that does not fit so well.
Your comparison to primo levi is weak. la tregua was published by the man who lived through it, not by a third person reporter with a known anti-israeli disposition, interviewing litigants in an active court case with an obvious agenda.
It’s funny how so many people want to deny the Holocaust ever existed. It is readily apparent that the Nazis wanted to hide there crimes, yet boasted about how they could kill so many. Actually it is more ironic than anything that the Nazis would do this knowing that they were going to loose the war and be caught for there crimes. It is to bad that such a bragging clan of people could talk so much about how racially pure they were, and yet kill so many innocent people. Not to smart in my book. Nazis, Who needs them! Not me!
We’re never going to know the exact numbers from the Holocaust, and quite frankly I don’t think the exact figures matter. The commonly accepted figures are close enough. What we do know - unless actively involved in denying facts - is that the Nazis had a systematic program of exterminating undesirable persons that was specifically, but not exclusively, directed toward Jews.
While I would not say the State of Israel is blameless in its actions over the last sixty years - it has neither committed nor condoned anything that comes close to what the Nazis did. Yes, the loss of a family member hurts however it happens, but that does not put every action that led to the death of innocents on exactly the same moral plane.
ZioNAZI J-ws have surpassed the LOLocaust many times, especially counting 9/11 and the wars thereafter.
There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz workcamp.
What a surprise, ‘anachore’ is both a Holocaust Denier and a 9/11 truther. Still, if you tell lies about one act of mass murder, you might feel compelled to repeat the practice. I just wish that all those ‘truthers’ who keep claiming that their movement hasn’t been infested with Nazi scum could read comments like these.
Very sad.
Too bad the butchery is always in contention,kinda blots out the millions of citizens and soldiers on both sides that died in the war.
Rich Americans feared socialism,Churchill hated the Germans(NAZI or otherwise),communist Jews under Stalin butchered millions of Christians and Muslims and perhaps a Jew or two,Hitler was an opportunist who played on German fears of communists and their desire for vengeance on the heavy hand bunch at Versaille.Find something else to get up about.
the Holocaust ( It means a sacrifice) over shadows modern tragedies and there are many,Hitler was bad,so were the three other psych clowns that led the world into hell.BTW any new clowns around? eg.Bush,Blair perhaps Obama ,what’s the count on dead Philistines these days bible thumpers?
WELCH & ANACHORE - I know that 911 stuff is just crazy, BUT I would like to get any info I could on how you melt steel( more interested in brass, copper,…) with kerosene(jet fuel). Pro or anti-conspiracy folks wont answer my question. Please divulge the secret.
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