David Cole on Treblinka

[Editor’s note:  I had a misunderstanding with David about “publishing” this article. “Publishing” meant to me getting it into the hard-copy of Smith’s Report. “Publishing” for David meant “posting” it online and then whatever. In the event, his publisher Adam Parfrey got it up online several days ago. I understood then where I made my error. The other issues for me include the fact that I wanted to publish a response to Cole’s article so my readers would have help judging what Cole wrote. The response is now available. It’s by Eric Hunt. So now I am posting this on my Blog, and I will follow it with Eric Hunt’s reply, whom Coles suggest is an ignorant liar. And then I will post several documents, linked, by Robert Faurisson so you will be able to judge the “history” of Cole’s ugly and unnecessary references to Professor Faurisson. OK. So here we go.]

Since the release of my book, I have received many emails from revisionists regarding my position that Treblinka and the other so-called “Reinhardt” camps were places that functioned primarily, if not solely, as murder factories. To the credit of the revisionist community, most of these emails have been intelligent and supportive. But recently, Fred Leuchter and Robert Faurisson launched a campaign of name-calling against me, with Fred going so far as to declare that I am “not a revisionist.”

Here’s my response.

Regarding Auschwitz, Majdanek, and the other camps that still exist in physical form (and with blueprints, work orders, etc.), revisionists won. The revisionists of the ‘80s and ‘90s (myself humbly included) won that debate. The public may not know it yet, but we know. We won it fairly, using facts and logic.

But that wasn’t enough of a “victory” for some. I have seen abysmal things written about David Irving and Mark Weber, due to what is perceived to be their “weakness,” their “lack of commitment to the cause,” because they are open to the idea that there were mass killings in 1942 – 1943 in Poland at the “Reinhardt” camps.

Keep in mind, to the Holocaust lobby, the mainstream media, and the academic world, none of this bickering means anything. To them, dismissing the fiction that Auschwitz was an extermination camp with gas chambers makes you a denier. Period. You think what I wrote about Treblinka has in any was lessened the “blackout” against my book? Of course not, and I knew it wouldn’t. Auschwitz has become a matter of faith, a secular religion, and “whoever denies Auschwitz denies the Holocaust entire.”

Researchers like Mattogno and Graf have pushed the notion that Treblinka and the “Reinhardt” camps were transit camps. Jews were sent there, only to be divided up and sent to other camps. Simple transit camps. This explains the camps’ small size versus the numbers sent there.

I can kill that argument with one sentence.

In their book Treblinka: Extermination Camp or Transit Camp, Mattogno and Graf acknowledge the authenticity of the Korherr Report, which they correctly describe as “made by the statistician Richard Korherr at the beginning of 1943 at the instruction of Heinrich Himmler.” The report, they accept, contains “very accurate numbers of the Jews deported to the supposed extermination camps” (both quotes are from page 106 of the English-language version of the book).

Among these “very accurate numbers:"

• Transportation of Jews from the Eastern provinces to the Russian east: 1,449,692
• Processed through the camps in the General Government area: 1,274,166
• Through the camps in the Warthegau: 145,302

Mattogno and Graf hold that these numbers indicate Jews sent through “transit camps,” on their way to other camps.

But what these two gentlemen fail to mention is the sentence in the Korherr Report that follows those numbers (numbers they admit are accurate, in a report they admit is authentic):

“The above numbers do not include the inmates of ghettos and concentration camps” (in the original German: “In den obigen Zahlen sind nicht enthalten die Insassen der Ghettos und der Konzentrationslager”).

And right there, the “Reinhardt camps as transit camps” theory is dead. Killed. Finished off. Irreparably. My work is done. I’m off to Moe’s to have a drink. Anyone care to join me?

Korherr makes it clear that the Jews “processed through the camps in the General Government” were NOT, following the processing, “inmates of ghettos and concentration camps.” Transit camp theory, RIP.

Mattogno and Graf devote not one word to that sentence. Not one word is devoted to “The above numbers do not include the inmates of ghettos and concentration camps.” Odd, as that seems to be a rather key sentence.

I could stop here. But I won’t. Because maybe you’re thinking, “okay, okay, they weren’t transited through Treblinka et al to other camps or ghettoes…maybe they were just set free! You know, to roam about in Ukraine or near the front.” Putting aside the patently ridiculous notion that the Nazis would take over a million Jews (people they considered sworn enemies and communist partisans) out of Polish ghettos, transport them closer to the front, and let them roam free, the Korherr Report still kills that theory, as Korherr enumerates the only remaining countries under Nazi control that still had, by early 1943, sizeable Jewish populations: Romania, Hungary, and France.

He says nothing about a million Polish Jews milling about freely in Ukraine or at the front.

The Jews “processed through the camps in the General Gouvernement” were not thereafter “processed” into other camps or ghettos.  They “disappeared.”

Need more proof? Here’s the most important part. In Korherr’s conclusion, here’s what he writes (I’ve kept one sentence in the original German): “From 1937 to the beginning of 1943 the number of Jews in Europe, partially due to emigration, partially due to the excess mortality of the Jews in Central and Western Europe, partially due to the evacuations especially in the more strongly populated Eastern Territories, die hier als Abgang gerechnet werdenwhich (“which are here counted as departed”), has diminished by an estimated 4 million.”

These Jews are departed. “Evacuations,” along with excess mortality and pre-1941 emigration, constituted a population reduction in West, Central, and Eastern Europe of an estimated 4 million Jews. If the evacuated Jews were merely transferred from Poland to Ukraine, or from Poland to the occupied East, why would these Jews be counted as among those who are no longer in West, Central, or Eastern Europe? Why would their status be equal to those who have died from natural causes and suicide? Use your damn common sense here. It’s as clear as day.

The evacuees were not, by early 1943, in camps or ghettos. They were “counted as departed.” Not departed from the Reich proper, but departed from all of West, Central, and Eastern Europe. Departed. Gone. Not in Ukraine. Not at the front. Gone.

The “Höfle message” confirms the Korherr Report numbers. Mattogno, in his latest book “Inside the Gas Chambers,” mentions Höfle seven times in the book’s main body (Korherr gets two footnote mentions). Why? Because the Höfle document is merely numbers, with no pesky mentions of “diminished/reduced population,” and no argument-killing sentences about how “the numbers do not include the inmates of ghettos and concentration camps.”

Mattogno can use Höfle and his transit camp theory is not jeopardized. But he has no answer to Korherr.

Some revisionists will reflexively ask, “but where’s the physical evidence for the ‘Reinhardt’ camps? Where are the ‘gas chambers?’” I feel partly responsible for the fetish among revisionists regarding physical evidence. Yes, physical evidence is vital to study, when it exists. But if it doesn’t, it’s completely acceptable to build a case through contemporaneous documents. That’s not a “cop out.”

Did the inmates at Treblinka eat? For a year-and-a-half, did they ever ingest food? Did the commandant ever eat? Well, show me the Treblinka stove. Did the inmates ever go to the bathroom? Did the commandant? Well, show me a Treblinka toilet. Show me or draw me a Treblinka toilet. You can’t? Then none existed.

My sarcasm aside, the fact is, we all know that Treblinka existed. Studying the barren land where Treblinka once stood isn’t like looking for Noah’s Ark. We know that what we’re studying did exist. And we know that the camp was razed. The case for Treblinka (and Sobibor, etc.) must be made through documents.

This is not abnormal in the field of historical research. My work in the early ‘90s with physical evidence was never intended to suggest that only by physical evidence can a case be made for a gas chamber, for a camp, for intent, for population changes. I did not study physical evidence to the exclusion of all other types of evidence.

If you want to claim that the Colossus of Rhodes never existed, fine. But your “proof” can’t be “because there’s no photo of it.” Some things did exist in this world, only to be erased by natural or man-made causes.

The Nazis had over a year to eradicate the traces of Treblinka. And the Soviets and Poles have done God-knows-what to that area since 1945. So the physical landscape as it exists now is worthless. And the survivors testimonies are worthless, too, as they proved in the ‘80s by either purposely or “by fuzzy memory” nearly sending a man to his death for being an “Ivan the Terrible” that he never was (Demjanjuk).

Were the Jews at the Reinhardt camps gassed? Were the bodies buried and then dug up to be burned, or burned immediately? We may never be able to say with 100% accuracy. But, we can say that the “transit camp” theory is bunk. It holds no water. The Korherr Report kills it. Simultaneously, the Korherr Report, coupled with the Höfle telegram, coupled with the March 1942 Goebbels diary entries about liquidating Polish Jews, coupled with the December 1942 entry about having to “answer to some things” regarding what’s happening to Polish Jews “if we do not want to run the risk of becoming gradually discovered,” coupled with Himmler’s admission at Sonthofen about murdering Jewish children and rubbing the Jewish ghettos in the General Government out of existence, creates a good case for murder at the Reinhardt camps.

We don’t have a still-existing Treblinka gas chamber. What we have is documentary evidence that not only points to the Reinhardt camps as being terminal stops, but also voids the “transit camp” theory as a viable possibility.

Mark Weber, David Irving, and I, have all separately come to the conclusion that there is legitimate cause to view the Reinhardt camps as places where murders occurred. If Fred Leuchter and Robert Faurisson wish to claim that I am “not a revisionist,” I would humbly suggest that a more accurate solution would be for them to refer to themselves as “deniers,” and reserve the term revisionist for people who follow rather than finesse the evidence.

Two Postscripts:

1) In a piece on Inconvenient History, Jurgen Graf attacked David Irving for his belief that mass murders occurred at the Reinhardt camps. Graf’s position is 100% dependant on the idea that if the Nazis did have four secret murder camps, the Nazi higher-ups would have been blabbing about them left-and-right to every underling and bureaucratic cog.

Graf’s view is that the Nazi leaders had no secrets, and dispensed no information on a need-to-know basis. If Fritz Reuter, an employee in the Department of Population and Welfare in the Office of the Governor General for the District of Lublin, didn’t know the nature of Belzec, if he believed it to be a regular camp, well then, gosh darn it, it was, because the Nazis leaders never kept anything secret. Himmler? Goebbels? They were like Wikileaks. Everything out in the open, 24 hours a day.

If you actually buy that, you’ll buy Graf’s attack on Irving.

When Himmler received the Korherr Report, he insisted that the term “special treatment of the Jews” be removed in the section regarding the General Government evacuees (through Brandt, Korherr was instructed to use the term “processed through the camps in the General Government” instead). Himmler himself told Korherr that the report might be good in the future for “camouflage purposes” (Tarnungszwecken), but that, for now, it would be for his eyes only.

If Himmler insisted on “camouflage” in a report that only he was going to see, doesn’t that give some indication of the level of secrecy surrounding the “evacuations?” If he was that cautious with a document not distributed to anyone else, why would he be expected to scream the truth about the Reinhardt camps to low-level bureaucrats?

2) Ever since my position on Treblinka became known, well-meaning revisionists have been pillorying me with instructions to “watch Eric Hunt’s Treblinka archeology video. Watch it. Oh, just watch it. You’ll see how wrong you are.”

I have never met Mr. Hunt, and I have no beef with the young unsuccessful elevator conversationalist. But I must confess, there was little of value in Hunt’s examination of the Smithsonian Channel’s Treblinka “excavation” show.

To be clear, that Smithsonian program was nutty as a bowl of pistachios. It was empty, meaningless, overwrought, and just plain dumb. There was nothing of value in it. It should rightfully be mocked, and I’m glad young Mr. Hunt invested an hour-twenty in doing so.

Hunt devotes a lot of time to the fact that many survivors – perhaps numbering in the thousands – were sent through Treblinka to other camps. But this is no scoop. As I point out in my book, Reitlinger made this exact point in “The Final Solution” in the 1950s. That possibly thousands of Jews were chosen for labor and sent on from Treblinka to other camps doesn’t negate the horrific figure given by Korherr for the Jews processed through the General Government camps who constitute the Jewish “population reduction” in Europe.

Hunt’s takedown of the Smithsonian Channel’s stupidity is fine enough, but what’s relevant to the discussion here is what Treblinka actually was. Hunt “addresses” that around the fifty-three minute mark in his video. And what he says exposes him as either a liar or a man with no actual comprehension of what he’s speaking about.

His quote:

“We’re told the Nazis used ‘transited to the East’ as a code word to mean ‘gassed at extermination camps.’ Yet there is credible evidence of hundreds of thousands of Jews being expelled eastwards. For instance, this is a report from September 1942, of the Joint Distribution Committee providing medical aid to 600,000 Polish-Jewish refugees in Asiatic Russia.”

This is pure fraud on Hunt’s part. The “report” in question (which is actually a fundraising appeal by the same “Zionist liars” whose “Zionist lies” Hunt repeatedly cautions us about) refers to Polish Jews who supposedly fled to the Soviet Union from Poland after the German invasion in 1939. This “report” with its 600,000 figure refers to Jews who fled long before the German invasion of Russia.

Walter Sanning uses the Joint Distribution Committee claim correctly in his early revisionist work, “The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry.” He accurately states that the 600,000 figure refers to Jews who either fled from Poland into Russia, or who were “evacuated” and/or “deported” by Stalin into the Russian interior in ’39 and ’40 (Dissolution, pages 42 through 44, hardcover edition).

That 600,000 figure is completely, entirely, 100% unrelated to the Nazis “expelling Jews eastwards” in 1942 and 1943. Does Hunt even know enough about basic World War Two history to understand the logistical impossibility of the Nazis expelling Jews to “Asiatic Russia” in ’42 and ’43? Does he know that it would have necessitated crossing the front? During the time of the Battle of Stalingrad? How much World War Two history does this guy know beyond “gas chambers?”

Regardless, Hunt either lied about the Joint Distribution Committee claim, which dealt purely with Jews who either fled or were “evacuated” by the Soviets in 1939 and 1940, or he is simply too ignorant of basic history to understand that in 1942 and 1943, trains were not running from occupied Poland to “Asiatic Russia.”

In any event, his “documentary” adds nothing but misinformation (intentional or due to ignorance) to the legitimate study of the nature of Treblinka.

End