FAO manual on HCN toxicity: 200 ppm quickly kills human beings and other mammals
Peter Myers, February 9, 2009; update Feb. 17, 2025.
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(1) Personal Insults (2) Decalogue - from Richard Krege (3) Reply to Richard Krege - Peter M (4) Reply to Richard Krege on blue Cyanide stains (5) Pressac's Proof - Evading the question (6) - (8) Documentary evidence - Christopher R. Browning (9) Browning on Einzatsgrupen (10) Safety: How Sonderkommandos could enter Chambers, touch bodies (11) Don: HCN toxicity to mammals & insects - Gassing humans would require high concentrations (11) Reply to Don on HCN toxicity (12) Manual of fumigation for insect control - issued by the FAO (UN) (13) FAO manual says Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) has Molecular weight of 27.03 (14) FAO manual on HCN toxicity: 200 ppm quickly kills human beings and other mammals (15) FAO manual - Dosages and concentrations; conversion from g/m3 (mg/L) to ppm (16) FAO manual - for HCN, 1 g/m3 = 1 mg/L = 829 ppm = .0829% by volume (17) FAO manual - for HCN to kill Weevils (normal) requires 8.2 mg/L for 5h (18) FAO manual - for HCN to kill San Jose scale requires 6 mg/L for vacuum fumigation, 10 mg/L for older methods (19) Combining the HCN FAO data: Humans 200 ppm, Weevils 6795 ppm, Scale 4972-8290 ppm (20) Cyanide uptake into the body through the skin is slower than if you breathe it (21) HCN Inhalation of 100 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) kills humans - EPA (22) Pressac's intermediate position (23) Hitler assassination plot movie omits key facts
(1) Personal Insults
From: Dave <dakersting@earthlink.net> Date: 24.02.2009 04:49 AM
Peter, I consider you very tolerant about the kinds of argument you pass along to your readers. I think it's fair to simply delete personal insults when they rise in otherwise-constructive debate.
I acknowledge that, for the sake of interested observers, it might be worthwhile to answer some arguments or notions, even when they are presented as mere accessories to a thesis of insult, but that kind of discourse takes pursuit of truth into needlessly ugly, neurotic mental neighborhoods.
I really can't comprehend why anyone would feel an emotional attachment to thesis or anti-thesis, either one: it's so obvious that we're all better off simply seeking the truth itself, whatever it may turn out to be.
It is valid to encourage certain minimum standards, as they are, themselves, essential to any worthy outcome.
Reply (Peter M.):
I assume that insults will rebound on those who issue them.
(2) Decalogue - from Richard Krege
From: Richard <r_krege@iimetro.com.au> Date: 24.02.2009 05:59 PM
Peter, If you can answer these 10 below questions satisfactorily then I'll become a believer like you too.
The Decalogue of Inconvenient Facts about the World War II Holocaust 1) In 1919, commiserating Martin Glynn, Governor of the State of New York publicized in America the 'holocaust of six million Jews and eight hundred thousand Jewish children' caused by 'the tyranny of war and lust for Jewish blood' in Poland and Ukraine, while The New York Times and other Jewish media reported that Jews were burned alive by the thousands in synagogues in Ukraine [in fact Jews and synagogues survived the war intact]. Thus, Pius XII cognizant of this soon-forgotten-fiction remained silent about the resurrected, six-million propaganda of WW II Holocaust or Shoah.
2) American, and German high resolution WW II aerial reconnaissance of the Nazi massacres sites and of the Death Camps reveals mass graves about one hundred times smaller than claimed by survivors and holocausts historians. For example, at Babi Yar in Kyiv (Kiev) the mass graves could contain at most 2,400 corpses (instead of 250,000) while at the Treblinka II camp near Warsaw about 4,000 (instead of the claimed 900,000 to 2,200,000)
3) After the bullets (about 2,500,000 victims), Diesel exhaust is claimed to be the second killing agent of the WW II Holocaust (over 2,000,000 victims), but it did not harm 450 American children stuck in a train for 90 minutes in a tunnel under the US Capitol. US Environmental Protection Agency and forensic pathologists world-wide determined that Diesel exhaust is non-toxic, facts publicized by Patrick Buchannan in 1993.
4) The common pesticide ZyklonB left a thick layer of blue ferrocyanides deposits on the walls of the delousing chambers at Auschwitz, but almost none in the plaster and bricks of the alleged homicidal gas chambers. This refutes gassing of about 500,000 Jews at the morgues in the Birkenau crematories.
5) Liberation footage of the Nazi camps taken by the US Signal Corps preserved at US National Archives shows 98% of inmates in perfect shape of nutrition (some even obese) including Jewish orphans and plump Jewish babies. The iconic plowing of emaciated corpses (not one showing starvation edema) into a mass grave at the Bergen Belsen camp by the British bulldozer, reflects mortality caused by English medical students treating victims of camp's typhus and dysentery with powdered milk instead of cubes of sugar, grains of salt and clean water.
6) Liberation Day photos of Dachau taken by the US Signal Corps showing hundreds of milling inmates, ignoring 3,000 loafs of military bread delivered by an American lorry, but while clamoring for American cigarettes dispensed by US Army officers, proves that there was no starvation at that Nazi camps and the low level of emaciation was caused by GI epidemics post liberation.
7) In the 1956 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica the venerable Rabbi Jacob Marcus, founder of the American Jewish Historical Society and the Dean of the Hebrew Union College, wrote that European Jews were deported by the Nazis in inhuman conditions to work in the East, where many died in the process. However cognizant of the WW I 'holocaust' propaganda, Rabbi Marcus ignored genocidal claims of the Nuremberg 1945-48 International Military Tribunal.
8) To forestall the Maquis Terror of the Franco-Prussian (1871) and of subsequent wars, the Articles of Hague (1905) and Geneva (1921) Conventions on the conduct of war, authorized wartime executions of ununiformed, civilians caught using or carrying arms, along with scores of civilian 'hostages', who presumably assisted the resistance fighters. Hence, the heart rending of German photos and footage showing publicly hung or shot such offenders, including by American MPs. Because these Articles were annulled in 1949 by Geneva Convention, hence, inter allia, Americans resorted to torture as in the photos from the Abu Gharib prison.
9) In 1979, Howard Stein, a Jewish-American Psychology Professor at the University of Oklahoma coined the term of Judaic 'Group Fantasies of Martyrdom and Omnipotence' and method of 'Survival through Persecution'. In 1991 the most recognized historian of the WW II Holocaust, Prof Raul Hilberg publicly declared 'I am the document man [but not for eyewitness testimony]', while in January 1994, The New York Times acknowledged the Holocaust Survivor Syndrome as the cause of false memories of WW II survivors. By 2009, at least half a dozen of WW II Holocaust memoirs writers are caught as hoaxers. By early 2009, the concept of Holocaustianity was responsible for over 5,000 Internet postings
10) In 2003, Israeli demographers determined that there were '1,092,000 needy survivors worldwide' awaiting distribution of '$13.2 million annually in humanitarian funds', inferring that there were at least six million survivors alive 58 years after the Holocaust, most of them unfit for forced labor teenagers, children É and babies, allegedly first singled out for extermination. Assuming the average lifespan of 72 years, U.S. actuarial statistics indicate that 1,100,000 survivors alive in 2003, had to be part of a young cohort of over 12,000,000 Jews alive in 1945, whom Nazis did NOT bother to exterminate. The Jewish Week 11-28-2003 Two new studies to determine the location of Jewish Holocaust survivors, for use in making future allocations to the most needy, differ widely on the number of survivors worldwide, The Jewish Week has learned. Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer for the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found 1,092,000 survivors worldwide. Jacob Ukeles, a policy researcher in Manhattan, found 688,000. The Ukeles survey, an update of one he prepared in 2000 for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, found only minor differences from his previous effort. Lawrence Eagleburger, chairman of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, commissioned both surveys. Eagleburger had hoped to use the figures in determining how to distribute $13.2 million annually in humanitarian funds for needy survivors worldwide
(3) Reply to Richard Krege - Peter M., February 25, 2009
My reply on the Prussian blue Cyanide stains is in the next item.
The Night of the Long Knives showed that Hitler was prepared to use violence even on his colleagues.
In Table Talk session 119, of 23rd January 1942, midday, Hitler says:
{pdf 241} The Jew must clear out of Europe ... But if they refuse to go voluntarily, I see no other solution but extermination. {endquote}
In Table Talk session 156, of 22nd February 1942, evening, Hitler says
{pdf 338} The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world. ... We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew. {endquote}
Do you be nice to viruses? Don't we try to KILL viruses?
In Table Talk session 305, 3Oth August 1942, evening, Hitler says:
{pdf 682}.. until Jewry, which is the bandits' Intelligence Service, is exterminated, we shall not have accomplished our task. ... Any and every nation which fails to exterminate the Jews in its midst will sooner or later finish by being itself devoured by them. {endquote}
With regard to Gassing by Diesel fumes, Charles D. Provan "hired an instructor from the Pittsburgh Diesel Institute, took him to a neighborhood garage and asked to borrow their emissions testing equipment. He was surprised to find that, once the timing is changed in a diesel, it burns both dirty and poisonously." http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010304provan2.asp
Re World War I: The major part of the world's Jews were in Poland, which was part of the Russian Empire. They were in the crossfire between the German and Russian armiues. They opposed the Czar, and were thus seen as likely enemies by Russian soldiers. Jews in the West declared fears for their safety, but their fate in WWI was not comparable to WWII.
What happened to the millions of Jews "deported to the East" - including women, children & old people unfit for work?
(4) Reply to Richard Krege on blue Cyanide stains - Peter M., February 25, 2009
> The common pesticide ZyklonB left a thick layer of blue ferrocyanides deposits on the walls of the delousing chambers at Auschwitz, but almost none in the plaster and bricks of the alleged homicidal gas chambers.
A manual of the FAO (below) shows that the concentration required for fumigating insects is 30 to 40 times that for killing humans by inhalation.
Apart from that, the extermination Gas Chambers had forced Ventilation. This was designed to clear the poison quickly to enable workers to enter, remove the bodies, and do another batch. The ventilation would lead to lower HCN absorption and thus lower blue residues.
Wet bodies rubbing against porous surfaces such as mortar would increase the absorption. I imagine that terrified people sweat and urinate uncontrollably, so contributing to wetness. On the other hand, the brick walls of the chambers were lined with plaster, and may have been painted - see below. Leuchter was corrected by the chemist who did his analysis, on this point, when he found out that Leuchter had taken great chunks of brick in for analysis when he should have taken just a very thin surface layer, less than a hair in thickness:
{quote} Mark Singer on Fred Leuchter: "The Friendly Executioner."
... In addition to van Pelt, Morris had enlisted Jim Roth -- the chemist who had analyzed Leuchter's forensic evidence -- as a rebuttal witness. Only after he testified or Zündel's trial, Roth told Morris, did he realize where the material he analyzed had originated.[11] He acknowledged the limitation of his analysis: cyanide, by its molecular nature, would have bonded with the iron in the brick of the gas chambers only on the surface -- ten microns deep, just one-tenth the diameter of a human hair.
Thus, when a chunk of brick was crushed in the lab, the material beneath the surface would have diluted the specimen, rendering the test pointless. Looking into Morris's camera. Roth summarized, "I don't think the Leuchter results have any meaning."[12] [...]
12: Then how to explain the saturation of the brickwork of the delousing chamber, with the cyanide-blue stain permeating right through the bricks to the outside wall (see the photographs in the Rudolf Report)? That is more than "a few microns." If Mr Roth is not to become the laughing stock of his profession, he must have been misquoted. {endquote} http://www.fpp.co.uk/docs/Irving/cesspit/NYorker010299.html
The answer to the above is: Delousing required 30 to 40 times the concentration of HCN; and delousing chambers were not force-ventilated. Differences in lining (eg lack of plaster or paint) might also have been a factor.
{quote} [The Van Pelt Report]: Electronic Edition, by Robert Jan van Pelt
There is, however enough left to see that the walls had been plastered: in 1990 the forensic scientists of the Institute of Forensic Research in Cracow used plaster samples from the gas chambers of crematoria 2 and 3 as the basis for their analysis of residual cyanide. Yet, undeterred by all of this, Leuchter had no hesitation to determine on the basis of the few remains of the gas chamber of crematorium 2 that the walls of that room had been rough, unsealed brick and mortar, and that those walls that had never been painted.759 This was important because, if the wall had been coated with tar or painted, the bricks that remained would have been protected from the hydrogen cyanide, and it would have been impossible for a chemical reaction to occur between the hydrogen cyanide and the brick and mortar.760 ...
Roth explained that cyanide will react on the surface of brick or plaster, penetrating the material not more than 10 microns, or 0.01 mm, or one tenth the thickness of a human hair (one micron equals 1/1,000,000 of a meter, or 0.000039 inch). In other words, if one wants to analyze the cyanide concentration in a brick sample, one should take a representative sample of the surface, 10 microns thick, and no more. Yet, as Roth remembered, "[Leuchter] presented us with rock samples anywhere from the size of your thumb up to half the size of your fist. We broke them up with a hammer so that we could get a sub-sample; we placed it in a flask, add concentrated sulfuric acid. It undergoes a reaction that produces a red-colored solution. It is the intensity of this red color that we can relate with cyanide concentration." 814 Roth explained that his laboratory analysis could not make up for faulty sampling technique. If the sample was not representative, the results would be meaningless. Because the cyanide cannot penetrate into the brick for more than 10 microns, it is unavoidable that the cyanide concentration will be diluted 10 times when the sample is 100 microns or 0.1 mm or 0.0039 inch thick, it will be diluted 1,000 times when the sample is 10 mm or 0.39 inch thick. Leuchter did not carefully slice the surface of the materials he was sampling. In fact, as the video tapes clearly show, he hacked happily into the walls, and took samples that counted at least a thousand of layers of material that could not have reacted with the cyanide. As Roth remarked, "I might have had the back side of the brick, not the front side of the brick, but I didn't know which side was up and which was down. That's the point: Which was the exposed surface? I didn't even have any idea. That is like analyzing paint on a wall by analyzing the timber that's behind it." In conclusion Roth stated that "I don't think the Leuchter results have any meaning." 815
Indeed: the only conclusion one may legitimally draw from Leuchter's sampling is that the very fact that the Alpha laboratories found any residual cyanide at all is extremely significant. In fact, Leuchter's samples most likely proved the use of morgue 1 of crematorium 2 and 3 as a gas chamber. ...
{endquote} http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/trial/defense/van/ix
{quote - continued from above} In the first test the scientists exposed fresh plaster the scientists exposed fresh plaster, fresh mortar, new brick, and old brick, both in dry and wet forms, to a high concentration of hydrogen cyanide (2%) for 48 hours. The results of this test, which simulated the conditions that existed in a fumigation room, showed that the various materials absorbed the hydrogen cyanide with very different rates.
material Fresh plaster Fresh mortar New brick Old brick condition dry wetted dry wetted dry wetted dry wetted CN? mg/kg 24 480 176 2700 4 52 20 0
In a second test, the team added carbon dioxide to the hydrogen cyanide, introducing the two gasses in a rate of 5 parts of CO2 to one part of HCN. This test simulated the conditions that existed in homicidal gas chambers.
[I]n their reasoning the revisionists did not take into consideration certain circumstances, namely, the simultaneous action of cyanides and carbon dioxide on the chamber walls. In the air exhaled by man carbon dioxide constitutes 3.5% by volume. Breathing for 1 minute, he takes in and next exhales 15-20 dm3 of air, comprising on the average 950 cm3 CO2; consequently, 1000 people breathe out about 950 dm3 of carbon dioxide. And so it can be estimated that, if the victims stayed in the chamber for 5 minutes before they die, they exhaled 4.75 m3 of carbon dioxide during that period. This is at least 1% of the capacity, e.g. of the gas chamber of Crematorium 2 at Birkenau, the capacity of which was about 500 m3, whereas the concentration of hydrogen cyanide virtually did not exceed 0.1% by volume (death occurs soon at as low HCN concentrations as 0.03% by volume). 820
After having been exposed to the CO2 and HCN mixture, the samples were aired for 48 hours in the open air at a temperature of about 10-15°C, and then subjected to analysis.
material Fresh plaster Old mortar Fresh mortar New brick Old brick condition dry wet dry wet dry wet dry wet dry wet CN? µg/kg 5920 12800 1000 244 492 388 52 36 24 60
While in the tests that simulated the situation in the fumigation rooms the CN? content was higher in the wetted materials, in the tests that simulated the condition in the homicidal gas chambers the results were reversed, that is that the CN? content was lower in the wetted content. "It seems that here a tendency is revealed towards the competitive action of carbon dioxide, which dissolved in water," Markiewicz's report explained. And it added that "in this series of tests fresh plaster showed an exceptionally high affinity to hydrogen cyanide." 821
The samples of both tests were analysed again one month later. In the samples that had been exposed to hydrogen cyanide only, the average decrease was 56%, while in the samples that had been exposed to the combination of carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide, the loss was 73%. "In as many as four samples that loss ranged from 97% to 100%." 822 This was an important result, as the negationists had claimed that conditions for the preservation of HCN in homicidal gas chambers should have been better than in fumigation gas chambers. In fact, it was opposite. {endquote} http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/trial/defense/van/ix
(5) Pressac's Proof - Evading the question
From: G Date: 24.02.2009 06:19 PM
I told you that I didn't
> recall you addressing Faurisson's counter-arguments which you > had been unable to find in the review you hadn't read.
And since you keep insisting on Pressac's main "indirect proof" I asked you:
> Do you actually believe that the shower-heads were "false",
as alleged by
> Pressac?
Your answer:
> Faurisson's tactic is "attack is the best defence". The
assumption is
> that the onus of proof is on the Affirmer side.
> That's unwarranted. Hitler himself in Table Talk talks about
> Extermination in several places. Then there are Himmler's speeches.
> The deportation of large numbers of Hungarian Jews in mid 1944, when
the
> Russian army was closing in, could not have been about "resettlement
in
> the East".
> Some were for use as slave labour. But what about the women, children
and
> old people sent too?
Well, whatever that is, it's certainly no response to my question. I'm taking the liberty of rephrasing and expanding it:
Pressac claimed the 14 showers ("Brausen") were "DUMMY SHOWERS made of wood or other materialls [sic]". He also stated categorically: "A gas-tight door can be intended only for a gas chamber." http://www.mazal.org/Pressac/Pressac0429.htm
Do you agree with these propositions? And what's your response to Faurisson's counter-arguments?
Reply (Peter M.):
Who's Evading the Question?
Pressac's Proof is here (I sent it out a week or so ago):
{quote} This inventory indicates that the equipment installed for "Leichenkeller 1 / Corpse cellar [morgue] 1" included: "1 gasdichte Tür / 1 gas-tight door," AND "14 Brausen / 14 showers", two items that are strictly INCOMPATIBLE with one another. ... This inventory is absolute and irrefutable proof of the existence of a gas chamber fitted with dummy showers in Krematorium III.
{endquote} https://hhp.orgfree.com/books/pressac-auschwitz/429.php
In reply to Pressac's above Proof, you referred me to large chunks of the writing of Faurisson and Crowell.
I asked you to provide the specific sentences where Faurisson or Crowell address it; or to address it yourself. But you have not supplied either. You cannot do so by posing questions to me - that's just a rhetorical device. I was not born yesterday. You must supply an answer to Pressac's Proof.
(6) Documentary evidence - Christopher R. Browning
From: Joe Fallisi <flespa@tiscali.it> Date: 24.02.2009 06:24 PM
Peter you're making a really great and useful work. I didn't know the writing of Browning... it's awful. If the Einsatzgruppen did what themselves said to have done, how could anyboby be "surprised" about the use even of the gas within some lager? On the other hand we know that certainly it was previously used, among other means (mostly lethal injections), in the Euthanasia programs, for instance in the castle of Hartheim - and... within the Reich, in a period of "peace" and on Germans! Actually some fuehrer of the camps had worked just there before to be assigned to a Polish lager (ex.: Franz Stangl before to go to Sobibor and then to Treblinka). Why would have been strange or so absurd or difficult going on and deeper and on a bigger scale in this kind of practices in Poland, against "aliens" and during the most terrible world war?
(7) Documentary evidence - Christopher R. Browning
From: giuseppefurioso@aol.com Date: 24.02.2009 10:26 AM
That tens of thousands of jews were massacred in large numbers (along with others) on the Eastern Front by the Einsatzgruppen is not an essential component of the ''official'' Holocaust narrative. To prove the Holocaust we need evidence that MILLIONS were murdered in specially constructed GAS CHAMBERS as part of a STATE SPONSORED PROGRAM...today more than sixty years after the end of World War ll we still don't have anything except for a boatload of ''survivor testimonies '' and a few ''criminal traces'' ( according to Pressac).
Don't you find it odd that Chrisopher Browning is the only non Jewish historian of the Holocaust. No world class gentile historians of the Third Reich have tackled the subject...every single major study of this alleged crime has been authored by a jew...makes you think.
Reply (Peter M.):
You've been reading too much Revisionist/Denier literature. Why should the burden of proof be on only one side in the debate? Why shouldn't the Deniers have to explain what happened to all those millions of Jews "deported to the East" - including women, children & old people unfit for work?
The case of the Hungarian Jews is incisive, because they were deported in mid-1944, when the Russians were closing in, and there was nowhere to "resettle" them.
You say that Christopher Browning is the only non Jewish historian of the Nazi Holocaust. How do you know that?
What about Pressac? What about Provan?
What about Richard Evans, professor of modern history at Cambridge, who also testified (as an expert witness) against Irving? http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/trial/defense/evans/
What about Heinz Peter Longerich, another expert witness: http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/trial/defense/pl1/00
Are you arguing that non-Jewish Whites should deny the Nazi Holocaust to preserve "White" honour? If Hitler besmirched that honour, why not just disown him and the Nazis? Anyway, the Allied armies which defeated Hitler were themselves mostly "whites". And Hitler ended up killing the British Empire.
By saying that Chrisopher Browning is the only non Jewish historian of this topic, do you imply that his evidence should be overlooked? Has he not already supplied quite a lot of evidence to answer your questions?
(8) Documentary evidence - Christopher R. Browning
From: patrick <patrickh@ymail.plala.or.jp> Date: 24.02.2009 05:31 AM
Comments on only one section of "Documentary evidence - Christopher R. Browning"!
"IV. Documentary Evidence for the Systematic Mass Killing of Jews by Shooting "
1. This section deals with the shooting of adult male Jews living in the war zone. Why were the Jews living in Germany not taken out and shot in Germany. Not in public, but in closed camps in the German country side! Why transport them at great inconvenience to Poland? These adult male Jews on the Eastern Front could legitimately be considered partisans, who at that time could be legally executed according to international law. 2. Browning seems to suggest that in the background of the holocaust a war was going on. No, on the contrary, the war was the background of all this shooting. Were only the Germans supposed to fight with boxing gloves on?
3. How humanistic the National Socialists in this section seem to have been in comparison with the Brits and Americans (firebombing entire civilian -mostly women and children- populations in cities). Far worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, Koln, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka!
4. And now the insamely racist Jews bomb Palestinians from the safety of American made and paid for airplanes. The National Socialists had the courtesy and courage to go right up to Jews and say "Please leave our country!" Today`s Jews hide in airplanes. Am I trying to justify those shootings? No, just putting them in perspective!
4. What happened to the Auschwitz gas chambers? Does Browning deal with it some where else? To paraphrase Professor Faurisson, "No Auschwitz gas chambers! No Holocaust.!" It does seem that the holocaust moves eastward as the stories about Dachau, Buchenwald, and now Auschwitz become less and less tenable. A holocaust without the Auschwitz gas chambers is like the play Hamlet without Hamlet.
Patrick Henry
Reply (Peter M.):
If you had looked in Google before making your challenge, you would have found Browning's books. They include:
The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy Toward German Jews
The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939-March 1942
Browning was not the only expert witness at the Irving/Lipstadt trials. He may have left Auschwitz for other witnesses to deal with - perhaps others who specialised in it, such as Van Pelt.
(9) Browning on Einzatsgrupen
From: bill Date: 24.02.2009 07:42 PM
Christopher Browning makes a great to-do over alleged Einzatsgruppen executions. He fails to mention that all his quoted figures come from the Einzatsgrupen reports to Berlin, and that the field reports to the commanders in Russia have conveniently disappeared. Thus, there is no way to compare the alleged kill totals with the field reports. Browning ignores the fact that many of the Einzatsgruppen reports in Berlin presented to the Nuremerg Trial were crude Soviet forgeries and that genuine documents were altered to insert inflated numbers. He also ignores that soldiers frequently inflate kill totals to impress their superiors. In short, he displays no critical reasoning ability whatever.
Browning does not address the question of where the Germans found the alleged number of Jews, as two-thirds of them had already been evacuated by the Red Army ahead of the Germans. Russia is a vast land and tracking down and locating that many Jews would have been utterly beyond the capability of a security force numbering only three thousand men. This would be particularly true in the harsh winter months, when motorized movements were all but impossible and the Jews had many places to hide. In short, Browning simply takes documents at face value and ignores the logistical problems involved. This kind of "thinking" is not of the real world. Browning does not mention the trial of Field Marshall Manstein at Nuremberg, where his English lawyer, Paget, was able to show that of thousands of Jews supposedly shot in a Russian village, the real number was fewer than three hundred of whom only a fraction were Jewish. Browning ignores the trial strategy of the Einzarsgruppen defendants at Nuremberg, who told the court what it wanted to hear to get more lenient treatment. He simply ignores the parameters of what he is discussing.
Finally, Browning ignores military realities. The Germans were fighting a war against a Soviet opponent enjoying vast numerical and material superiority. The Germans needed every available soldier to counter the Red Army. Running around looking for Jews to shoot was not a luxury they could afford. The soldiers were needed at the front to plug impending Soviet breakthroughs. None of this is to deny that the Germans killed large numbers of Jews in Russia. But the numbers could hardly have been as great as alleged. Had they been, there would have been no need for the "gas chamber" hoax in the first place.
Reply (Peter M.):
You depict the Nazi soldiers as valiant martyrs, forgetting that this war had been initiated by Hitler, in keeping with ideas he set out years earlier in Mein Kampf. Futher, that he expected the Soviet army to be a pushover, and went to war without much intelligence about the true state of the USSR - despite Oswald Spengler's warning in his 1934 book Hour of Decision.
With regard to your statement
"Browning ignores the fact that many of the Einzatsgruppen reports in Berlin presented to the Nuremerg Trial were crude Soviet forgeries and that genuine documents were altered to insert inflated numbers ..."
Browning at least supplies references and footnotes - quite a lot.
You just make assertions without proof. And you've been doing it in all your emails.
In Table Talk session 293 of 2Oth August 1942, midday, Hitler says:
"... it is always the flower of the Party - my SA leaders, my Regional and Group Leaders - who are the first to fall. If I fail to exterminate the vermin as a counter-balance, a dangerous situation would arise."
That's the logic. His troops were dying in battle, so Jews had to pay.
(10) Safety: How Sonderkommandos could enter Chambers, touch bodies
From: Truth Seeker <wahrheitseeker@gmail.com> Date: 24.02.2009 07:14 PM
You did it once again, showing that you really have NOT fully examined this issue. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I have done enough research to know that your responses are flawed, to say the least. That you immediately jumped to the conclusion that the "Holocaust" happened from those flawed beliefs, without even checking any sort of revisionist response, suggests that you did not enter this debate seeking the truth. For instance, in response to this question: 1) Since the bodies of gassed people deeply absorbed the hydrogen cyanide ("The situation in the gas chambers was different. With its powerful ventilation system, and with the fact that most of the hydrogen cyanide was absorbed by the victims' bodies, the time could be reduced to 20 minutes") how the Sonderkommandos could manage with that while being with and touching the same bodies in the crematorium itself? Of course they didn't use there nor masks neither gloves - at least I imagine.
You stated: Forced ventilation enabled those workers to enter.
Unfortunately, this does not really answer the reader's question. You totally ignored anything to do with the cyanide-laden bodies. Doesn't matter how much ventilation there is if the bodies have ALREADY absorbed the cyanide. Also, not going into the flawed-ventilation theory (which Rudolf has already responded to numerous times), you do realize that 4 out of the 6 gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau had NO mechanical ventilation? This despite that mechanical ventilation was a requirement for delousing chambers using Zyklon-B. Had these been real gas-chambers, mechanical ventilation would exist (or at least be added) to all of them.
Reply (Peter M.):
Cyanide gas works primarily by its effect on the lungs. The following webpage on Cyanide states that "Absorption through the skin is a much slower process than through lungs, so a short exposure to skin is not very dangerous. It also takes a higher concentration of the gas".
If you have evidence otherwise, please supply it.
{quote} Vertebrates carry oxygen in their blood via hemoglobin, while insects do not carry oxygen in their blood at all. Instead, insects have air tubules that carry oxygen directly to all cells in their body. Because cyanide poisons hemoglobin too, animals that use it are all the more susceptible. ... Mammals are also very dependent on oxygen- utilizing metabolism, and will die in minutes if it is shut off. Insects, lacking hemoglobin, die more slowly as their cells must be starved of ATP. ...
HCN will pass through the skin, and poisoning can result. Absorption through the skin is a much slower process than through lungs, so a short exposure to skin is not very dangerous. It also takes a higher concentration of the gas {10}. Absorption of cyanide through the skin is not significant unless the concentration is high over a long exposure.
According to July 1993 issue of _American Family Physician_, cyanide poisoning through the skin is very rare: " Cyanide is absorbed through the lungs, gastrointestinal tract, and skin. Symptoms can occur within seconds of HCN [cyanide gas] inhalation; ....Cyanide is readily absorbed through the mucous membranes and the eyes. Clinical cases of cyanide poisoning after dermal exposure are rare and most often have involved burns with molten cyanide salts or immersion in cyanide solutions." Cyanide poisoning through the skin is therefore not a significant mode of poisoning unless you have very high concentrations over a very long period of time. ... {endquote} http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/cyanide/cyanide.001
(11) Don: HCN toxicity to mammals & insects - Gassing humans would require high concentrations
From: Don <NX7933@hotmail.com> Date: 24.02.2009 09:23 AM
Why you keep making this absurd argument on mammals and insects and HCN, when I have already refuted it is baffling. I even provided you with a quote from a libeler who agrees that the Nazis must have used high concentrations of HCN if the exterminations indeed went on every 15 minutes, as the "eyewitnesses" claim.
You also falsely claimed that revisionists do not address the libeler's arguments, and this is clearly false. All of what you are sending has been addressed by the revisionists, all the way through the material on Pressac, who has been extensively addressed by the revisionists. In the end, Pressac was in the pay of the Zionist Klarsfelds, and as a pharmacist was not qualified to deal with the matter of the gas chambers. Rudolf, a chemist, and Leuchter, an execution gas chamber engineer, are qualified.
Unfortunately, I do not have the time to go through all your material on Pressac and refute it point by point. It would eat up all my free time. The revisionists have done a much better job than I ever could. Anyone interested can find much of the material here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aihr.org+pressac http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acodoh.com+pressac http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Avho.org+pressac
The arguments regarding the HCN on the vents has been addressed. I remember reading about the matter in revisionist texts. Unfortunately I don't remember the article/book off-hand.
I resend what I sent you the last time, since you keep retreading the same absurd arguments:
>>Leuchter is (I'm pretty sure) completely
>>discredited - see http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/
Although his
>>cyanide tests are significant, they were done on the rebuilt chambers
>>where you'd not expect any residues (the Auschwitz guides don't
tell you
>>this, but the ones they show off are rather poor reconstructions
after the
>> war, they're the ones that used to say "4 million gassed
here"). Leuchters
>> results are off beam because, for physiological reasons, lice
need
>>something like 250 times the concentration of Zyklon to kill them
than
>>what humans need.
>>
> Leuchter's study had a few shortcomings, which were corrected in Rudolf's
study. Nonetheless the essence of Leuchter's work is sound and the results
were confirmed by Rudolf's studies.
>
> As for the that argument about lice needing 250 times less HCN than
humans to be killed... This is an absurd argument that has been addressed
by revisionists.
>
> Here are the concentrations of HCN compounds in the alleged execution
gas chambers, in the delousing chambers and in an ordinary Bavarian farmhouse:
>
> http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndgcger.html
(11) Reply to Don on HCN toxicity - Peter Myers, February 24, 2009
Firstly, the figure I quoted:
"A concentration of up to 16,000 ppm (parts per million) is sometimes used, with exposure times of up to 72 hours, to kill insects, but as little as 300 ppm will cause death in humans within fifteen minutes or so." http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/leuchter-faq-02.html
You wrote:
"Zyklon B was designed to kill insects, not humans. It was designed to be placed in a structure, and to let the poison soak for 24 hours or more. As such, Zyklon B released the HCN slowly over a period of hours. Zyklon B was not designed to kill humans in a matter of minutes."
Then you quoted Germar Rudolf:
http://www.codoh.com/found/fndgcger.html
"3.2. The Fumigant Zyklon B Insects and especially their eggs are considerably less sensitive to HCN. For the most part it is necessary to expose them for several hours to rather high concentrations (0.3 to 2%/vol.) before their death is certain. Right until the end of World War Two, Zyklon B, a substance produced and licensed by the company DEGESCH of Frankfurt/Main, was of paramount importance in combating insects ..."
To deal with the concentrations of HCN needed to kill humans by inhalation, and insects by fumigation, I refer to the following manual of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. This one manual supplies all the statistics plus the definitions, explanations and formulas for calculation. And it does so without any reference to the Nazi Holocaust.
(12) Manual of fumigation for insect control - issued by the FAO (UN)
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5042E/x5042E00.htm#Contents
Manual of fumigation for insect control
by E.J. Bond
Research Centre Agriculture Canada London, Ontario Canada
FAO PLANT PRODUCTION AND PROTECTION PAPER 54 FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS ==
(13) FAO manual says Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) has Molecular weight of 27.03
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5042E/x5042E0b.htm
Hydrogen cyanide (HCN)
Hydrogen cyanide was one of the first fumigants to be used extensively under modern conditions. Its use for treating trees under tents against scale insects was developed in California in 1886 (Woglum, 1949). The use of HCN has been declining in recent years, but it is still important in certain fields of application.
HCN is one of the most toxic of insect fumigants. The fact that it is very soluble in water has considerable bearing on its use in practice. ...
PROPERITES OF HYDROGEN CYANIDE
Alternative name : hydrocyanic acid; abbreviation used : HCN
Odour Suggestive of almonds Chemical formula HCN Boiling point 26°C Freezing point -14°C Molecular weight 27.03 ...
Although HCN is strongly sorbed by many materials, this action is usually reversible when they are dry, and, given time, all the fumigant vapours are desorbed. With many foodstuffs little, if any, chemical reaction occurs, and there is no detectable permanent residue.
Because of the high degree of sorption at atmospheric pressure, HCN does not penetrate well into some materials. It WAS largely because of this that vacuum fumigation was adopted.
(14) FAO manual on HCN toxicity: 200 ppm quickly kills human beings and other mammals
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5042E/x5042E0b.htm
TOXICITY
HCN is a powerful, quick acting poison. In humans and other warm-blooded animals it induces asphyxiation by inhibiting the respiratory enzymes and renders tissues unable to absorb oxygen from the blood in the normal manner. The toxic action is reversible. In practice, this means that a person who is completely unconscious from the effects of cyanide, but whose heart is still beating, may still recover if suitable antidotes nod remedial measures are applied in time. HCN may be absorbed in toxic amounts through the unbroken skin (see below under "Precautions"). ...
Toxicity to Insects
Among the commonly used famigants, HCN is one of the most toxic to insects. It aiso has a rapid paralyzing effect on most species. This action is an important consideration in dealing with insects, because sublethal concentrations may bring about apparent death. After exposure to the fumigant, the reversible action of the poison may permit the insect to recover. This reaction has already been referred to as protective stupefaction (Lindgren, 1938). It is important from the practical point of view because it means that the maximum recommended concentration should be atteined as quickly as possible during the application of the fumigant. ...
HCN may be purchased absorbed in inert materials. A convenient method of absorption is the use of highly porous cardboard discs. ...
HCN may be absorbed in toxic amounts through the unbroken skin; the amount is increased if the skin is moist. With modern fumigation techniques it is unnecessary for an operator to remain in a full fumigation concentration of HCN. The fumigant is either discharged from cylinders outside the structure or the gas is generated indoors by one of the methods described above. In the second type of operation, workers who apply granular calcium cyanide or HCN discs, or who initiate generation by dropping sodium cyanide into acid, are able to move away before a heavy concentration of fumigant builds up. During the aeration process it is usually possible to open some doors and windows from outside the structure and to start exhaust fans and blowers so that the full concentration of HCN in the air may be reduced before any person goes inside. ...
HCN concentration in air
Possible effects on humans if gas is inhaled Parts per million g/m3 (oz/1 000 ft3 ) 10 0.011 Threshold limit for continuous daily exposure of 8 hours. 25 0.027 Slight symptoms after several hours breathing. May lead to chronic poisoning. 50 0.055 Serious disturbances after breathing 0.5 to 1 hour. 100 0.11 Dangerous after breathing 0.5 to 1 hour with possible fatal results. 200 0.22 Quickly kills human beings and other mammals.
(15) FAO manual - Dosages and concentrations; conversion from g/m3 (mg/L) to ppm
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5042E/x5042E03.htm#Dosages and concentrations
Dosages and concentrations
There should be a clear understanding of the difference between dosage and concentration.
The dosage is the amount of fumigant applied and is usually expressed as weight of the chemical per volume of space treated. In grain treatments, liquid-type fumigants are often used and the dosage may be expressed as volume of liquid (litres or gallons) to a given volume (amount of grain given as litres or bushels) or sometimes to a given weight (quintals, metric tonnes or tons).
From the moment that a given dosage enters the structure being fumigated, molecules of gas are progressively lost from the free space either by the process of sorption and solution described above or by actual leakage from the system, if this occurs. The concentration is the actual amount of fumigant present in the air space in any selected part of the fumigation system at any given time. The concentration is usually determined by taking samples from required points and analysing them. It may thus be said that the dosage is always known because it is a pre-determined quantity. Concentration has to be determined because it varies in time and position according to the many modifying factors encountered in fumigation work.
Three methods of expressing gas concentrations in air are in common use: weight per volume, parts by volume and percent by volume. ...
WEIGHT PER VOLUME
For practical designation of dosages, this is the most convenient method because both factors - the weight of the fumigant and the volume of the space - can be easily determined. In countries using the metric system, this is usually expressed in grammes per cubic metre (g/m3), whereas in countries using the British system of weights and measures, expression is usually in terms of pounds or ounces avoirdupois (avdp) per 1 000 cubic feet (lb/1 000 ft3 or oz/1 000ft ).
By a fortunate coincidence in units of measurement, grammes per cubic metro are, for all practical purposes, equal to ounces per thousand cubic feet. Thus, recommended dosages can readily be converted from one system to the other*. Conversion factors for the various units are given in Appendix 2.
In reports of laboratory experiments, dosages and concentrations are usually given in milligrammes per litre (mg/L), equivalent to grammes per cubic metre.
PARTS OR PERCENT BY VOLUME
Parts by volume and percent by volume will be discussed together because both modes of expression give the relative numbers of molecules of gas present in a given volume of air. The values for both modes have the same digits, but the decimal points are in different places (3 475 parts per million by volume of a gas is the same as 0.3475 percent by volume).
Parts per million of gases in air are used in human and mammalian toxicology and in applied industrial hygiene. Percent by volume is used in expressing the flammability and explosive limits of gases in air.
CALCULATIONS FOR CONVERSION OF CONCENTRATION VALUES
By means of simple calculations giving useful approximations, values may be converted from weight per volume to parts by volume and vice versa. These calculations take into account the molecular weight of the gas and the fact that, with all gases, the gramme molecular weight of the substance occupies 22.414 litres at 0°C and 760 millimetres pressure. (If precise values are needed for the other temperatures and pressures, corrections for absolute temperature and pressure may be made in the usual manner. )
A. To convert grammes per cubic metre (or milligrammes per litre or ounces per 1 000 cubic feet) into parts by volume.
1. Divide the given value by the molecular weight of the gas and multiply by 22.4; the resulting figure is the number of cubic centimetres (cm ) of gas per litre of air.
2. One thousand times the figure obtained is the value in parts per million by volume.
3. One tenth of the figure obtained in (1) is the percentage by volume.
Example. To convert 1g/m3 of PH3 (molecular weight 34 approximately)
(1x22.4)/34 = .659 cm3per litre
= 659 parts per million by volume approximately
= .0659% by volume approximately
B. To convert parts per million (or percentage of volume) of gases to grammes per cubic metre (or milligrammes per litre or ounces per 1 000 cubic feet):
1. Divide the parts per million by 1 000, or multiply the percentage by ten to give the number of cubic centimetres of gas per litre of air.
2. Multiply this figure by the molecular weight of the gas in question and divide by 22.4.
Example. To convert 400 ppm of methyl bromide (molecular weight 94.95 = 95 approximately)
400 ppm = 0.04% of volume = 0.4cm(3) per litre
= (0.4 x 95)/22.4
= 1.7g/m3 (or mg/L or oz per 1 000 ft3)
Comparative figures for weights and volumes at various levels have been calculated for the important gases, and these are given in the tables accompanying the subsequent discussion of each particular gas.
CONCENTRATION X TIME (c x t) PRODUCTS
Most fumigation treatments are recommended on the basis of a dosage given as the weight of chemical required for a certain space - expressed as grammes per cubic metre or pounds per 1 000 cubic feet ...
(16) FAO manual - for HCN, 1 g/m3 = 1 mg/L = 829 ppm = .0829% by volume
Above, the FAO Report gives the Molecular weight of HCN as 27.03
The formula supplied above says that to convert 1 gm/m3 or 1 mg/L to ppm, the formula is
(1 x 22.4) / 27.03 = .829 cm3 per litre.
This is multiplied by 1000 to give 829 ppm.
= .0829% by volume approximately ==
(17) FAO manual - for HCN to kill Weevils (normal) requires 8.2 mg/L for 5h
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5042E/x5042E04.htm#Toxicity of fumigants to insects
TABLE 5. - RESPONSE OF METHYL BROMIDE - RESISTANT GRANARY WEEVIL TO SIX OTHER FUMIGANTS*
Fumigant Resistant Normal Tolerance ratio Methyl bromide 19.7 3.6 5.5 HCN 16.4 8.2 2.0 Acrylonitrile 4.9 1.05 4.7 Ethylene oxide 20.1 4.1 4.8 Chloropicrin 6.6 3.9 1.7 Phosphine 13.0 2.2 5.9 Ethylene dibromide 8.5 2.85 3.0
*Dosage in mg/L for 5h, at 25°C required for 50 percent mortality (Monro et al,1961).==
(18) FAO manual - for HCN to kill San Jose scale requires 6 mg/L for vacuum fumigation, 10 mg/L for older methods
Schedule M. Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) fumigation of dormant nursery stock
Balled nursery stock should be held for 10 to 14 days after digging before fumigation. Avoid free moisture on plants. After fumigation, all plants should be gently but thoroughly washed by sprinkling with water. They should be protected from sunlight and wind for 48 h following treatment.
ATMOSPHERIC FUMIGATION WITH HCN
Fumigation of imported nursery stock to prevent introduction of San Jose scale, Aspidiotus perniciosus Comst. Dosage HCN 6 g/m3 (6 oz/l 000 ft3 ). Temperature not below 4 C. Fumigant is introduced with stream of air. After this, continuous recirculation of fumigant/air mixture in the chamber at a rate per hour equivalent to 40 times the cubic capacity of the chamber. Exposure period: 30 min.
The above is based on information supplied by the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Plant Protection Service (Personal communication P.H. Van de Pol, 17 March 1959).
If the above rate of circulation of fumigant/air mixture cannot be attained, apply the treatment used for many years to control scale insects and woolly aphids before the introduction of Yacuum fumigation or high velocity circulation. Dosage of HCN, 10 g/m3 (10 oz/l 000 ft3). Temperature not less than 4 C. Exposure period: 45 min to 1 h. Continuous circulation of air/fumigant mixture is advisable. If fans or blowers are used, they should be of the shielded, nonexplosive type.
For discussion of technical problems in the fumigation of plant material with HCN, see Be ran (1946) and Van de Pol and Rauws (1957).
VACUUM FUMIGATION WITH HCN (Harper 1942 - 57)
Fumigation of balled citrus plants to control scale insects, specifically the Californian red scale, Aonidiella aurantii (Mask.). Dosage of HCN 5 g/m3 (5 oz/l 000 ft3 ). Temperature not less than 10°C. Initial vacuum 100 mm (4 in) of Hg absolute pressure. Fumigant is introduced with stream of air until atmospheric pressure is restored. Exposure period: 1 h.
(19) Combining the HCN FAO data: Humans 200 ppm, Weevils 6795 ppm, Scale 4972-8290 ppm
Calculations by Peter Myers, February 24, 2009
200 ppm quickly kills human beings and other mammals. ( = .02 % by volume)
Weevils (normal) require 8.2 mg/L for 5h
8.2 mg/L = 8.2 x 829 = 6795 ppm
San Jose scale requires 6 mg/L for modern vacuum fumigation, 10 mg/L for older methods
6 mg/L = 6 x 829 = 4972 ppm 10 mg/L = 10 x 829 = 8290 ppm
Given that the Nazi camps did not use our modern methods, the higher figure would apply.
Conclusion: from these FAO statistics, to kill people by HCN gassing requires only about 1/30 to 1/40 the concentration required for fumigation. So one would expect much more blue staining in Delousing chambers than in Chambers for Gassing people. In addition, the latter were force-ventilated to all workers to enter soon after. This ventilation would have removed nearly all the HCN.
(20) Cyanide uptake into the body through the skin is slower than if you breathe it
http://www.eco-usa.net/toxics/cyanide.shtml
Cyanide
... Hydrogen cyanide is a colorless gas with a faint, bitter, almondlike odor. ...
Some of the first indications of cyanide poisoning are rapid, deep breathing and shortness of breath, followed by convulsions (seizures) and loss of consciousness. These symptoms can occur rapidly, depending on the amount eaten. The health effects of large amounts of cyanide are similar, whether you eat, drink, or breathe it; cyanide uptake into the body through the skin is slower than these other means of exposure. Skin contact with hydrogen cyanide or cyanide salts can irritate and produce sores. ...
Families can reduce their exposure to cyanide by not breathing in tobacco smoke, which is the most common source of cyanide exposure for the general population. In the event of a building fire, families should evacuate the building immediately, because smoke from burning plastics contains cyanide (and carbon monoxide). Breathing this smoke can lead to unconsciousness or death. Cyanide in smoke can arise from the combustion of certain plastics (e.g., polyacrylamines, polyacrylics, polyurethane, etc.). ...
Information excerpted from
Toxicological Profile for Cyanide July 2006 Update Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry United States Public Health Service
(21) HCN Inhalation of 100 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) kills humans - EPA
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/cyanide.html
* Cyanide is extremely toxic to humans. Acute (short-term) inhalation exposure to 100 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) or more of hydrogen cyanide will cause death in humans. (1,2) * Acute exposure to lower concentrations (6 to 49 mg/m3) of hydrogen cyanide will cause a variety of effects in humans, such as weakness, headache, nausea, increased rate of respiration, and eye and skin irritation. (1,2) * Tests involving acute exposure of rats and mice have shown hydrogen cyanide to have extreme acute toxicity from inhalation exposure. (3)
(22) Pressac's intermediate position
From: Eric Walberg <efgh1951@yahoo.com> Date: 24.02.2009 10:46 PM
You quote this at least 3 times and I do not know what it means. Can you explain? (I think Pressac is unfocused and unconvincing and this quote proves it.)
>I am not a Jew and I was at one time a "revisionist". After reading this book, some will no doubt think that I still am one. This is quite possible and I bear them no grudge. The distinction between these two fiercely opposed schools, the "exterminationists" and the "revisionists", becomes meaningless once a certain threshold of knowledge about the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has been reached. I have passed this point of no return.
Reply (Peter M.):
Pressac is not a natural writer; it was not his vocation as it is yours. He wrote his two books because he felt that he had discovered something important, and that the world needed to know.
A Revisionist who becomes an Exterminationist is different from one who accepted the orthodox position all along.
Such a person, like Pressac and Provan, has worked things out by himself. He concludes that the Revisionists' disproofs are wrong, but also acknowledges that in the wake of the shocking revelations about Gas Chambers at the end of WWII, overstatement was common.
Pressac himself went on to distinguish Delousing chambers from Gas Chambers. The Nazis blew up the latter but not the former, and that in itself hints at a difference between the two.
"The delousing gas chambers ... were left intact by the SS (as opposed to the extermination gas chambers, which were dynamited in an effort to conceal criminal activity from the rapidly approaching Soviet Army)." http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/leuchter-faq-02.html
When WWII came to an end, leaders of the victorious US army did not understand the difference, and proclaimed (extermination) Gas Chambers at camps where those claims have now been withdrawn. If anything, the process might have gone the other way, out of precaution.
In that postwar environment, exaggerated claims were made. The Jewish religion was brought up to date by incorporating the Nazi Holocaust as the latest Gentile assault against Jews. An Industry was built on it. And Palestinians and Arabs paid the price.
The Revisionist-become-Exterminationist rejects that aggrandisement, exceptionalism and industry-building. So such a person is in between the two major camps.
Finkelstein and Arno J. Mayer are in that middle position too. They are rejected by both sides, and are in a sort of Limbo. You might argue that the Deniers support these two. Deniers do like Finkelstein's book The Holocaust Industry, but excise his affirmation of Extermination in their discussion of it. Faurisson favourably reviewed Mayer's book Why Did the Heavens not Darken?, but his review failed to mention Mayer's central thesis, of a policy-change from Ethnic Cleansing to Extermination as the tide turned in Russia. These authors would feel uncomfortable with those who use them in this way.
I discovered Zionism in 1995, and wrote about it that year. Feeling somewhat ostracised, I sought out others of like mind, but who were not extremist. I wanted to create a middle position in this mailing list, but not having studied Holocaust literature until recently, I avoided making comments on what happened and allowed Denier viewpoints to go unremarked.
Only recently have I realised that anti-Zionist dissidents are being dragged towards Nazism, as a current drags swimmers down a beach without them being aware of it.
In the case of a beach, the force is the moving water; if you don't take action in time, it might sweep you into a rip. In the case of anti-Zionism, the force is Nazi propagandists, and their vehicle is Holocaust Denial. This has become a surrogate for Nazism as a cause: these are "holy warriors", for whom Hitler is a prophet and debate a form of warfare.
In the same way, but on the other side of politics, Trotskyists work among Green groups.
I never intended to have a bloc of such people on my mailing list.
Nevertheless, their arguments press me further on, and give me occasion to send out the material of Browning, Provan et al, which I might not otherwise have come across.
(23) Hitler assassination plot movie omits key facts
From: Iskandar Masih <iskandar38@hotmail.com> Date: 25.02.2009 07:04 PM
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/CU0902/S00420.htm
Hitler plot movie omits key facts expert
Wednesday, 25 February 2009, 10:29 am
Press Release: University of Waikato Media Release February 25, 2009
Hitler plot movie omits key facts expert
An expert on the background of the plot to kill Hitler says Tom Cruise's Valkyrie movie omits key facts.
Waikato University academic Dr Norman Franke has a keen interest in the life of Karl Wolfskehl, whose poetry is considered by many to have been one of the inspirations for the 1944 bomb plot to kill Hitler. The Jewish exile spent the last 10 years of his life in Auckland.
Dr Franke says considering the story of the plot has had Hollywood - rather than arthouse - treatment, it's not a bad depiction of a piece of history and it should stimulate more interest in the July 20 plot.
However, he says the movie is simplistic in depicting the motivations behind the assassination plot, and is very light on showing any actual atrocities committed by the Nazi regime.
The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences lecturer is also an expert on the three von Stauffenberg brothers, two of whom were executed for their part in the ultimately unsuccessful plot. Dr Franke says there were actually 15 separate attempts to kill Hitler over a period of 12 years. When the bomb was finally placed under a desk and detonated, Hitler survived, and recovered to have Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his brother Bertold executed.
Wolfskehl knew all the brothers well and correspondence between him and Alexander, who was left out of the plot, survives. ÒWolfskehl had been part of a group of conservative elites they were a group of writers who had a very anti-modernism outlook,Ó Dr Franke says. ÒThe Stauffenberg brothers were also in this group from the mid-1920s.Ó
Dr Franke says many of the group were initially not opposed to the Nazi regime because it had conservative views, some of which matched their own. However, the Jewish members were soon forced out; Wolfskehl left Germany in 1993, spending some time in Italy before ending up in New Zealand. His long, moving, anti-Nazi poem, entitled Lebenslied, An die Deutschen (Song of Life, To the Germans) inspired members of the Stauffenberg group to actively oppose the dictator and eventually carry out the plot.
Dr Franke says the movie ignored important scholarly work on the background to the plot, such as that by German-born historian Peter Hoffmann, a detailed book by Edward Robert Norton, and Dr Franke's own work on the Wolfskehl/Stauffenberg link. There were three more important books in the pipeline when the movie was being written, and good scriptwriters would have been aware of that, he says.
ÒValkyrie doesn't deal with the very complex background of the plot such as the group, the influence of the poetry, the fact that church leaders and Socialists were crucially involved, or even the fact that all these people who were underground were in constant danger and were always spied on.Ó
Valkyrie was the name given to the operation to deploy the German Reserve Army in the event of a national emergency a plan which the Resistance modified, ready for use once Hitler had been killed.
Says Dr Franke: ÒIt is good this movie was made, and it's important to make history accessible to the wider public but over-simplification and over-mystification do not do justice to those men and women who opposed the dictator. Over-simplification and over-mystification also make it harder to draw parallels to today's totalitarian regimes.Ó
The plot was also the focus of a book by Christchurch-born Michael Baigent, best known for claiming that popular author Dan Brown plagiarised some of his ideas for the Da Vinci Code. He co-wrote Secret Germany: Claus v. Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade against Hitler which also discusses some conspiracy theories.
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