Tysk bevisförstöring under brinnande krig

"---The total absence of documentary evidence for alleged mass murders in gas chambers presents a huge problem for all orthodox "Holocaust" historians. In an attempt to solve this problem, Hilberg resorts to the same kinds of tricks that he used in his main work.

He liberally supplies his readers with documents proving deportation, which nobody denies, but avoids the subject of extermination. An example of this is his printing of the timetable of the German Railway System dated 16th January 1943, beginning on page 86. We recall that in The Destruction of European Jewry he dedicated seven boring pages to the diabolical German Railroad.

To explain the lack of documentation, Hilberg alleges that extermination orders were given verbally. For example he says Odilo Globocnik, the SS and police commander for the Lublin district, imparted genocidal instructions to Sobibor commander Franz Stangl on a park bench. His source for this is Gitta Sereny's book Into that Darkness,[9] whose utter worthlessness is known to everyone familiar with it.[10]

In addition, Hilberg resorts to an ancient trick abandoned long ago by more versatile champions of Exterminationism such as Jean-Claude Pressac. This is the trick of "decoding" and "interpreting,"[11] that is, reading something into documents that is not there. Thus he writes on page 132:

"One frequently used prefix is 'Sonder-." At Auschwitz, where the murders could not be concealed forever, an architect of the Central Building Administration designed three barracks for storage of the belongings of Jews who had been gassed. He called these buildings 'Three barracks to store the personal effects of Special Treatment.' Underground gas chambers became 'special cellars' and ground level chambers were designated 'bathing facilities for special treatment.'"

A close examination of the documents in which the prefix "Sonder" occurs shows that it was occasionally used to designate "execution," but in most instances had an entirely different meaning. As Carlo Mattogno has demonstrated, the "Barracks for Special Use" were simply barracks built for storage of the property of Jews who had been sent to the camp. The same was true of the "Bathing Facilities for Special Purposes" which were planned but never completed. These were envisioned as special facilities to combat typhus epidemics.[12]

The situation with mass executions of Jews on the Eastern Front was quite different. The first thing to be noted is that these events are documented, thus nobody denies they happened. Debate over these shootings concerns the number of victims and nothing else. The second thing to be noted is that we are dealing here with suspiciously extensive evidence in the form of "action reports" in which numerous massacres are listed with five figure numbers of victims. That the Germans would have allowed such inculpating evidence to fall into the hands of their enemies has evoked commentary from the British-Jewish historian Gerald Reitlinger. Although he believes that exterminations of Jews were real, his capacity for critical thought is far greater than Hilberg's. He makes the following observation:[13]

"It is not easy to understand why the murderers would have left such bountiful evidence of their crimes behind."

The question of authenticity of the Einsatz reports has not been resolved. The alleged numbers of murdered Jews are often demonstrably false, as they contradict other documents as well as forensic investigations.[14]

On page 145 Hilberg reproduces a card sketch, which, along with other evidence, is intended to support his allegations concerning executions in the East. On this card the numbers of Jews shot by Einsatz Group A in various regions are represented by coffins. The highest number of shootings is given for Lithuania, where, he alleges, no fewer than 136,421 Jews had been murdered as of 1942. This number does indeed appear in one of the Einsatz reports, where it is reported:[15]

"At the time of the Bolshevik invasion, according to a census made in 1923, 153,743 Jews were living in Lithuania. This represented 7.58% of the population... In numerous individual operations, a total of 136,421 Jews have been liquidated...

Jews in Ghettos:

In Kauen, around 15,000 Jews;

In Wilna, around 15,000 Jews;

In Schaulen, around 4,500 Jews."

Simple addition shows that the total number of allegedly liquidated Jews, when added to those still living in ghettos, is a great deal higher than the number of Jews present before the German invasion. This is only a part of the puzzling statistics, however:[16]

The same operational report for the adjoining country of Latvia states that around 25% of the Jewish population there had fled with the Bolsheviks. No corresponding exodus is mentioned for Lithuania, however. This is very puzzling because the Lithuanian Jews had as little reason to expect good things from the Germans as did the Latvian Jews. Jewish participation in the Bolshevik terror there had been proportionately much greater than in Latvia and had enraged the native population.

A large part of the Lithuanian Jews had lived in regions, which had been annexed to the Reich after the German conquest of Lithuania. At the time of the Einsatz report these Jews were still alive. According to Gerald Reitlinger, there were 40,000 such Jews in the area of Grodno at that time.[17] According to the Korherr report,[18] 18,435 Jews still resided in the Königsberg region at the end of 1942.

According to statistics prepared in Lithuania and based on original documents from the war years,[19] there were 3,693 children plus a large number of elderly persons (up to age 90) who were living in the ghetto of Vilnius at the end of May 1942. Since they were unfit for work, one would expect that these Jews would have been the first victims of any policy of extermination. In a report on schools in Vilnius, the Jewish American author Abraham Foxman points out that in October 1942, 1500 to 1800 children were receiving instruction there.[20]

Finally, material evidence of a mass murder of Jews in the alleged numbers is totally nonexistent. In the Lithuanian city of Marijampol in 1996, it was decided to erect a monument to tens of thousands of Jews who had allegedly been shot by the Germans. They began excavations at the site designated by eyewitnesses in order to locate the mass grave, but lo and behold, there was nothing there.[21] Even if the Germans had posthumously exhumed and cremated those tens of thousands of corpses, as Hilberg and his consorts allege, any mass grave would still be easily identifiable because of altered configurations of the soil.

Under these circumstances, a conscientious historian would not unquestioningly accept field reports as an infallible source.---"