Exploring Holocaust history. Debunking Holocaust denial.
Holocaust Controversies: Rebutting the "Twitter denial": the most popular Holocaust denial memes debunked Holocaust Controversies What Part Of The Word Genocide Do You Not Understand? Pages Main Page Auschwitz Aktion Reinhard Chelmno, Gas Vans & Euthanasia Soviet Union & Yugoslavia Nazi Policy Holocaust Deniers Miscellaneous Open Access Sources Open Access Secondary Literature Comments Policy About HC/Contact Us Abbreviations & Archives Sunday, May 21, 2017 Rebutting the "Twitter denial": the most popular Holocaust denial memes debunked "Twitter denial" (this includes Facebook and other social networks, of course), as primitive as it is, is the main form of denial today. So it may be useful to compile a list of rebuttals to the most common memes. One such meme repository I found in one neo-Nazi twitter account, and in the beginning the tweets from the account were being responded to here, but the post is still being updated with various other tweets and memes. If you want to translate this text into another language, you're hereby given permission to do so as long as you link to this original posting and give credit where credit is due. Warning: this post is very image-heavy. Also, take a look at this debunking of YouTube denial. If you want to copy a link to a particular argument to post on Twitter or elsewhere, please use the table below. The links are anchored to specific items. co 1. Revision of the Auschwitz plaque. 2. Detached Krema I chimney? 3. Flimsy wooden gas chamber door with a window? 4. Leuchter's report. 5. Alleged lies by the British government. 6. The First Holocaust canard. 7. Auschwitz swimming pool, hospital etc. 8. Arbeit macht frei. 9. The World Almanac canard. 10. The Red Cross stats canard. 11. The Red Cross inspected the death camps? 12. Gas chambers not mentioned in the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, de Gaulle? 13. Elie Wiesel did not mention gas chambers? 14. Elie Wiesel an impostor? 15. More Wiesel stuff. 16. Auschwitz decodes. 17. Survivors did not see or hear about gas chambers? 18. Anne Frank diary. 19. Rassinier denied Auschwitz gas chambers. Or was that Thies Christophersen? 20. The Larson canard. 21. Fake, unreliable or mistaken witnesses. 22. Scratched gas chamber walls? 23. Dachau gas chamber; the Broszat letter. 24. Survivor Lieberman and the Auschwitz ovens. 25. The Lachout document. 26. Fake Holocaust photos? 27. Science debunks Holocaust? 28. No Britannica mention of gas chambers? 29. Dr. Listojewski? Simon Wiesenthal's quote? 30. Small children and people unfit for work in Auschwitz? 31. Jews lie about the Holocaust? 32. Predetermined death toll? 33. Hilberg and famous witnesses shown to be liars, impostors during the Zündel trial? 34. Schindler's list a tale of fiction? 35. Bruno Baum admitted that false propaganda was created in Auschwitz? 36. Changing camp death tolls? 37. Death camps found only by the Soviets? 38. Rick debunks the Holocaust? 39. 6-digit tattoo but 6 million victims? 40. Cherry-red skin color absent on gassed corpses? 41. Contradictory Holocaust survivor numbers? 42. ADL admitted the Holocaust might be a hoax? 1. Revision of the Auschwitz plaque. Denier claim: Short debunking: the plaque never said those were 4 million Jews. So there is no mathematical contradiction whatsoever. Further comments: the Communists never claimed that all Auschwitz victims were Jewish; the Soviet Auschwitz report didn't mention this, there was an oblique reference to "not less than 4,000,000 citizens of the USSR, Poland, France, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Holland, Belgium, and other countries", but that's it. Also, history is not written by plaques. A museum plaque is not any kind of an authoritative scholarly study. While some survivors did accept the exaggerated Soviet figures, most Western historians didn't. The initial hugely exaggerated Soviet death toll was based on alleged cremation capacities supposedly available there, a very unreliable way to calculate anything, something that was recognized by many in the West. The Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß initially also claimed millions of deaths in the camp, but in the end he settled on an estimate of about 1.1 million Jewish deportees, which corresponds to the ballpark figure of about 1 million or so Jewish victims, i.e. what we know today. Notably, in providing this estimate Höß went against the interests of his Polish captors, who were intent on promoting the official Soviet figure of 4 million. The exaggerated Soviet Auschwitz estimate was never a part of the Jewish death toll estimates arriving at between 5 and 6 million victims, both because it did not denote "4 million Jews" and because such estimates were not arrived at by summing up camp death tolls, but rather by adding death tolls for individual countries/territories. The claim that the exaggerated Auschwitz death toll was considered "the truth" for 50 years is a lie. It was so considered in the Communist Poland, but even there the literature usually quoted the "2.5-4 million" range. Hilberg's estimate, for example, was 1 million. He was an authoritative Holocaust historian and yet did not accept this as the "truth". Conclusion: the meme is deceptive and irrelevant. Further reading: The Auschwitz Gambit: The Four Million Variant. 2. Detached Krema I chimney? Denier claim: Short debunking: this is the crematorium 1 in the so-called main camp; during the war the crematorium (including the morgue that served as a gas chamber) was converted into an air-raid shelter (the chimney was removed, of course); after the war the crematorium was restored by the authorities to represent the original state, including the chimney. The attempt was partially symbolic and partially botched. That said, the chimney always looked "detached" because it was connected to the crematorium by underground flues. Further comments: it is not clear what the argument is supposed to prove. That there was no crematorium there? This is debunked by numerous documents acknowledged by all leading deniers. No leading denier denies that the crematorium with a functioning chimney actually existed there during the war. They only deny its homicidal function. So this meme is doubly deceptive because it goes even against the leading deniers, not to mention proven history. The author of the meme acts as if they're the first person ever to have noticed that the chimney is detached. This sort of argumentation may work on simple, naive rubes but not on someone willing to do some basic research. Pressac explains about the chimneys of the crematorium before the conversion into an air-raid shelter: "[t]he initial chimney was of circular section, but as the result of damage it was replaced by one of square section. ... Between the furnace room and the chimney there was a shed housing the motor for the collective forced draught installation for the three furnaces" (Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, p. 131). That is, the chimneys - the unreconstructed ones - had always looked "detached", especially the second one. Because they were connected to the crematorium by the underground flues. (This was due to the standard cremation oven design which allowed for (optional) recuperation of heat of the combustion gases, which were sucked out of the incineration muffle in the downward direction due to chimney draft while giving off the heat to the neighboring ducts with the combustion air streaming upwards, into the incineration chamber.) Here's a German wartime plan of the crematorium (dated 03.08.1942) showing both chimneys: the old one (the taller one) and the new one (doc. 8 in Pressac, Die Krematorien von Auschwitz): Numerous plans show the "detached" chimney and the underground flues, like this one from 25.09.1941: As a side note: there were relatively few gassings in Auschwitz I as opposed to Birkenau (Auschwitz II), it is unlikely that the number of the people gassed in this small gas chamber exceeded 10000, so the "non-stop" comment, if it has ever been uttered, must have referred to the Birkenau crematoria, not to this Krema that played a truly secondary role in the Auschwitz Holocaust. Further reading: Pressac's Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, pp. 132, 133. 3. Flimsy wooden gas chamber door with a window? Denier claim: Short debunking: it was not a gas chamber door, so all the arguments comparing it to the "real" gas chamber doors are irrelevant. Further comments: first of all, some quick historical context. This small gas chamber was adapted from a morgue in the crematorium I of the main camp in late 1941. The gassings here were rare and occasional, it's unlikely that more than 10000 people were gassed in this chamber in total, the main killings took place in Birkenau since early 1942. As already explained above, crematorium I was converted into an air-raid shelter by the Nazis in late 1944 (to repeat, the killings at that time took place in Birkenau and in late 1944 were coming to an end anyway). The main modifications were documented by the Nazis themselves, so we know that the morgue/gas chamber was divided into 4 smaller rooms. After the war the authorities tried to reconstruct the original look of the crematorium but botched the job in several ways. The most important mistake was knocking down one wall too many: as they were removing the recently installed air-raid shelter walls of the small inner rooms, they also removed the wall between the morgue and the former washroom (hence the visible toilet drains, which originally were in the washroom). The door with a window (or a missing upper panel) is the door to the washroom, not to the morgue/gas chamber. This, by the way, is clearly indicated in the modern on-site diagrams showing both the present state and the pre-air-raid-shelter state. Photo credit: "Le Monde1" @flickr A little bit of reading about the basics goes a long way. The above applies also to the other door in that gas chamber as seen today. The tiny vestibule was added in 1944 to serve as an airlock for a newly added air-raid shelter entrance. Thus two new doors were added (entrance door and airlock door), which had not existed before that. To repeat, originally there were only two doors in the original gas chamber - the door in the no longer existent wall between the washroom and the gas chamber and the door between the gas chamber and the furnace room. Deniers sometimes point to the opening between the furnace room and the gas chamber, claiming there was never a door there. However even a normal morgue would have to have a doorway to the furnaces, and that doorway would have to have a door. And indeed, it existed according to the original documentation. But that original door opening between the furnace room and the gas chamber was also sealed by the Nazis during the conversion into an air-raid shelter, and everything said above also applies to it. The current opening is simply not the original. In fact, if you look at the diagram above, it was reopened in the wrong place, and the original doorway is still sealed. Based on a photo of "Le Monde1" @flickr Yet other deniers acknowledge that there was a door between the furnace room and the gas chamber, but point out that in the German plans it's a swinging door (e.g. in the plan of April 1942) which allegedly could not be gas-tight or strong enough for the mass gassings. The deniers make an assumption that the swinging door on the April 1942 plan was not a mistake. But it's clear that such plans did contain mistakes. Let's compare the April 1942 plan (left) with the with the November 1940 plan (right): Notice the differences in the door locations and the way they open. It's very unlikely most of those were actual changes since they served no purpose (except for the opening direction of the door between the washroom and the gas chamber - the door had to open outwards indeed, so that the corpses would not have blocked it, so it's a very telling change - but also note the alleged change in the location), therefore one or both of the plans contain mistakes. That originally there was a swinging door there is a fact, but it's not a given that it wasn't replaced with a normal gas-tight door in late 1941, despite a later plan showing it, the draftsman quite possibly simply having copied it from an older plan. Further evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from a 1944 plan of the crematorium turned into an air-raid shelter: You will notice that the same swinging door is drawn here. Problem? There was no longer a door or even a door opening there! That's something even the deniers are forced to admit (e.g. Rudolf in Lectures on the Holocaust, 2005, p. 255: "But this door and the wall opening belonging to it were removed during the conversion of this building to an air raid shelter, so the floor plan in Ill. 72 is faulty in this regard"; the above illustration is taken from this book). So the deniers know that this very door was mindlessly copied by a draftsman from an old plan in 1944, when it not only no longer existed but also contradicted the very purpose of the air-raid shelter rooms to be gas-tight, yet they still insist that the April 1942 plan is absolutely correct in this regard! This is simply irrational. What doors were actually used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz? The same as for the delousing chambers, i.e. the gas-tight ones. Notably, the delousing chambers in Auschwitz used wooden doors made gas-tight by felt stripes. Here is one such wooden gas-tight door in the delousing gas chamber of Block 1 in the main camp: Source. Here is a wooden gas-tight door of a delousing gas chamber in Kanada I in Birkenau: Source. And another wooden gas-tight door from Kanada I delousing gas chamber: Source. The possibility of using wooden doors for Zyklon B delousing chambers was described by the engineers G. Peters and E. Wüstinger of the firm Degesch (the producer of Zyklon B) in 1940 ("Sach-Entlausung in Blausäure-Kammern", Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung, 1940, vol. 32, issue 10/11, p. 193): The chambers should be kept as narrow as possible in order to ensure a sufficiently safe and gas-tight construction for the doors provided at both ends, also those made of wood; if possible, the doors should also have steel frames and the sealing surface (rubber profile or elastic felt strip) should rest on them. In addition to the suitability of the fumigation equipment, the tightness of these doors is of course a decisive factor for successful killing. For the delousing chamber in the concentration camp Flossenbürg we have the following cost estimate from 12.04.1940 (F. Freund, B. Perz, K. Stuhlpfarrer, "Historische Überreste von Tötungseinrichtungen im KZ Mauthausen", Zeitgeschichte, 1995, vol. 22, issue 9/10, p. 310): Manufacture and delivery of double-walled wooden doors for gas chamber with sealing edge and closure on all sides as well as frames and thermometers incl. fittings [...] Puttying and painting with protective paint twice of wooden doors for gas chamber, dimensions from pos. 60. Point made. The usual denier claim that wooden doors somehow cannot be made gas-tight is debunked by the brute fact of the delousing gas chambers having used such wooden doors (for gassings of likely higher HCN concentrations and longer durations). And no, the other argument, that such a door cannot withstand the crowd pressure, doesn't hold water. Among the mentions of the gas-tight doors for the homicidal gas chambers in the Auschwitz documentation perhaps the most curious is the following one, in the 31.03.1943 letter from Karl Bischoff to DAW (see van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz, pp. 314, 315), talking about the morgues no. 1 in crematoria 2 and 3 in Birkenau, the same rooms the witnesses described as homicidal gas chambers: At this occasion we remind you of another order of March 6, 1943 for delivery of a gasdoor [Gastür] 100/192 for morgue 1 of crematorium 3, Bw 30 a, which must be equipped exactly in the form and size of the basement door of crematorium 2, located opposite, to be made with a spy-hole of double 8 mm glass with a rubber seal and metal fitting. This order must be considered as very urgent. Not only were the doors to the gas chambers gas-tight, but also note that although the order was "very urgent", Bischoff specified that a "spy-hole of double 8 mm glass" was to be installed in the door in a gas-tight manner. While peepholes can often be found in the delousing chamber doors (and this was not designated as a delousing chamber but as a morgue), they are not necessary there, so why make such an urgent order more difficult? The document most probably referred to a sturdy gas-tight door of this type: Source. Source. Source. Why was there a heavy peephole protection grid on the inside of the door? Further reading: Hans Metzner on the gas chamber doors and the crowd pressure. 4. Leuchter's report. Denier claim: Short debunking: Leuchter has been debunked numerous times over the years, including by other deniers. It will suffice to read the following: Nizkor on Leuchter Harry Mazal, "A Documented Analysis of the Speech given by Fred A. Leuchter on November 10, 1991". Richard Green (PhD in chemistry), "Leuchter, Rudolf and the Iron Blues". Robert Jan van Pelt on the Leuchter report. Further comments: Leuchter is so outdated even by the denier standards that it's always weird to see him brought up on twitter as if he still had any relevance. I mean, I could at least understand the deniers relying on Germar Rudolf, an updated version of Leuchter (though as thoroughly refuted as Leuchter). But it seems that most of them are stuck in the 1980s. Contrary to some denier suggestions, Leuchter has not constructed a single gas chamber in his life. He claimed to have been tasked with designing a replacement gas chamber in Missouri, but even if the project was real, it never came to fruition. In fact, he both lacked the necessary expertise and was accused of underhanded business tactics. His report is full of fraudulent assertions. One small example will suffice, his claim about the Kremas 2 and 3: The investigated areas were the alleged gas chambers designated as morgue #1 on both drawings ... there was no ventilation... Whereas the intake and exhaust ventilation systems are amply documented for the morgues #1 in Krema 2 and 3. On the basis of this assertion Leuchter claimed that each of those gas chambers had to be naturally ventilated at least for a week after each gassing! This alone disqualifies his non-existent "expertise". Even worse, in a leaflet summarizing the results of his "investigations" Leuchter wrote: Categorically, none of the facilities examined at Auschwitz, Birkenau or Lublin (Majdanek) could have supported, or in fact did support, multiple executions utilizing hydrogen cyanide, carbon monoxide or any other allegedly or factually lethal gas. Based upon very generous maximum usage rates for all the alleged gas chambers, totalling 1,693 persons per week, and assuming these facilities could support gas executions, it would have required sixty-eight (68) years to execute the alleged number of six millions of persons. This must mean the Third Reich was in existence for some seventy-five (75) years. [...] Of equal importance are Exterminationist errors relating to the crematories. If these crematories, operated at a theoretical rate of maximum output per day, without any down time and at a constant pace (an impossible situation), and we accept the figure of at least six million executed, the Third Reich lasted for at least forty-two (42) years, since it would take thirty-five (35) years at an impossible minimum to cremate these six million souls. Since it is not claimed that a) six million Jewish victims were gassed (and gassed specifically at Ausch… truncated (277,975 more characters in archive)