http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... onism.htmlWednesday, October 18, 2006
That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part VIII: The Simferopol Massacres
Immediatly, Muehlenkamp claims that Graf and Mattogno's citation in "Treblinka" from Reginald T. Paget, defense council for Einstazgruppen commander General Field Marshall Erich von Manstein is useless because he is merely a defense council giving his unexpert opinion about how many Jews could or could not have been killed in a few days or a few weeks. One example:
"To me, the numbers stated by the SD appeared to be entirely impossible. Individual companies of about 100 men with about 8 vehicles are declared to have killed 10,000 to 12,000 Jews in two or three days. Since, as one will recall, the Jews believed in a resettlement and consequently took their belongings along with them, the SD could not possibly have transported more than twenty or thirty Jews respectively in one truck. For each vehicle, with loading, 10 km of driving, unloading and return, an estimated two hours had to elapse. The Russian winter day is short and there was no night driving. In order to kill 10,000 Jews, at least three weeks would have been necessary.
In one case we were able to check the numbers. The SD claimed to have killed 10,000 Jews in Simferolpol in November and declared the city free of Jews in December. Through a series of counter-tests, we were able to prove that the shooting of Jews in Simferopol had taken place on a single day, namely on November 16. There was only a single SD company in Simferopol. The place for the execution was situated 15 km away from the city. The number of victims could not have been greater than 300, and these 300 were in all probability not only Jews, but a collection of different elements who were under suspicion of belonging to the resistance movement
Roberto then chimes in.
Paget claims that there are reports in which «about 100 men with about 8 vehicles are declared to have killed 10,000 to 12,000 Jews in two or three days». This was impossible, Paget contends, because transporting the victims to the execution site was a bottleneck that could not be overcome as the special detachments of the SD had too few vehicles and couldn’t fill them to capacity with people because the Jews earmarked for execution took their belongings with them, believing they were to going be resettled.
Paget’s assumption underlying this claim is that the victims were taken with motor vehicles from the cities or towns where they lived to secluded execution sites somewhat further away. This was not necessarily so.
At the Babi Yar massacre on 29/30 September 1941, for instance, the over 30,000 victims were marched in a long line to a ravine near the city of Kiev, where they were shot down. At Kharkov in mid-December 1941, about 15,000 Jews were marched to a tractor factory outside the city, at which they were concentrated and near which they were later shot, in the first days of January 1942. In my article
Neither the Soviets nor the Poles have found any mass graves with even only a few thousand bodies ..., some evidence regarding this massacre is shown.
First, let's jump to his premises about how the Einsatzgruppen could have pulled off killing 10,000 to 12,000 Jews in two or three days.
For one thing, the Einsatzgruppen, as we shall see in regard to the massacre that will be more closely described later in this article, could count on vehicles made available by the German Wehrmacht, including captured enemy trucks and requisitioned civilian buses, in order to have a transportation capacity adequate to the size and intended time frame of the respective killing operation.
How does Roberto justify this?
The transport space available could further be stretched by stating a limitation to the amount of belongings that the Jews were allowed to take along for the alleged deportation, or by ordering them to leave behind all their belongings, which allegedly would be delivered to them later. This procedure was applied in killings with gas vans, see Kogon, Langbein, Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, page 91 (quote from the testimony of Ramasan Sabitovich Chugunov, platoon leader of a battalion of local auxiliary police, regarding the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto in Oktober 1943) and page 121 (testimony of Polish railway worker Vladyslav Dabrovski regarding transports to Chelmno extermination camp). As we will see later in this article, it was also applied on at least one occasion when Jews were driven to an out-of-town killing site to be shot there.
Sorry but the gas vans are total propaganda as pointed out before.
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?p=66095#p66095http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?p=66097#p66097As concerns the transport time required, it is hard to understand why a 10 km drive including loading and unloading would take as long as Paget’s «estimated two hours». If the required pressure was applied, fifteen minutes for each loading at the place of concentration, driving (at a speed of merely 40 km/h), unloading and returning seems enough time. So the eight trucks that Paget mentions could, under my above assumptions, transport 400 Jews to the killing site every hour and 2,800 in one assumed winter working day from 9:00 to 16:00 hours. By increasing the number of vehicles through recourse to Wehrmacht stocks and/or requisitions, this number could easily be doubled or tripled.
And how would they increase the number of vehicles used to transport the Jews? Recall earlier the way to do it was with,
captured enemy trucks and requisitioned civilian buses, in order to have a transportation capacity adequate to the size and intended time frame of the respective killing operation. These would not be gas vans, they would be used in conjunction with German made vehicles that were transformed into gas vans for the sole purpose of murder. The captured enemy vehicles would just be used for transport purposes.
The larger versions of the gas vans used by the Einsatzgruppen were described by several eyewitnesses as taking in 50, 60 or even more people at a time (Kogon et al, as above, page 87, quote from testimony of gas van driver Erich Gnewuch; page 91, quote from testimony of Chugunov, as above; page 98, reference to testimony of gas van driver Pauly; page 105, reference to testimony of Schiewer, member of Einsatzkommando 11a; page 128, quote from testimony of gas van driver Gustav Laabs, Chelmno; page 141, quote from written report by gas van driver Walter Piller). The measurements of the gassing compartment of one such van were stated to have been the following by gas van driver Burmeister, Chelmno (quote from testimony in Kogon et al, page 125): 4 to 5 meters long, 2.2 meters wide and 2 meters high – a loading area of at least 8.8 square meters, enough to accommodate at least 70 people. So we can assume that, if the trucks used to transport Jews to shooting sites were as big as the huge versions of the gas vans applied at a later stage of the extermination process, each of these trucks could carry at least 50 Jews to the respective shooting site.
Hence, Babi Yar was accomplished in the following way.
As to the tasks of cordoning off the killing site, ordering the victims to undress, leading them to the mass grave or ravine where or into which they were to be shot and shooting them down there, the special detachments of the Einsatzgruppen didn't perform these alone but with the assistance of other forces, such as the order police and the Wehrmacht's Feldgendarmerie (military police) and Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police). Thus, for instance, the Babi Yar massacre was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C in cooperation «
with the HQ of EGC and two Kommandos of the police regiment South». According to German historian Wolfram Wette ("Babij Yar 1941", in: Wolfram Wette / Gerd R. Ueberschär (editors), Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Jahrhundert, pages 152-164), Sonderkommando 4a was made up of members of the Sicherheitsdienst and the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), one company of a Waffen-SS battalion and one platoon of a police battalion, and reinforced by another two police battalions and units of Ukrainian auxiliary police; the task of supervising and guarding the march of Kiev’s Jews to the ravine in which they were killed was carried out by Wehrmacht troops under the orders of city commandant Eberhard.
And yet the ariel reconnisance photos show no evidence of a massive Babi yar massacre. No cremations. No trenches. No soil disturbance.
To sum it up, if «about 100 men with about 8 vehicles» (Paget) were not sufficient to kill the required number of Jews within the required time frame, additional human and material resources could be obtained to the extent required for achieving the desired result.
Could be obtained. The question is were they? And if there are any testimonies attesting to it, why should they be believed? This question is never answered and demonstrated satisfactorily. Roberto offers no proof of these extra captured vehicles being used and presents no trace of any person or document attesting to it in the holocaust narrative. Roberto is saying that because it could have happened, it therefore did. That is not enough. To skirt around this shortcoming, he then attempts to disprove the other allegation from Reginald T. Paget, defense council for Einstazgruppen commander General Field Marshall Erich von Manstein, that there was no mass execution of Jews at Simferopol. Although if Roberto is correct that many other police type detachments helped out with the regular Einsatzgruppen forces...
The "harsh atonement" began at Simferopol on 9 December 1941, when Sonderkommando 11b and the staff of Einsatzgruppe D wiped out the city's Krimchaks, probably at least 1,500 people. Thereafter the killing stopped for two days because Ohlendorf had to solve a personnel problem: the policemen of the 4th Company of Police Reserve Battalion 9, who had assisted Einsatzgruppe D in its massacres since the beginning of the Russian campaign, were tired of killing and had requested being given another duty. Their request had been granted, and Ohlendorf had to wait for the replacement unit, the 3rd Company of Police Reserve Batallion 3, to arrive at Simferopol.
When 3rd Company of Police Reserve Battalion 3 arrived at Simferopol, there was no time for getting its men used to the killing on a gradual basis. With the assistance of available men from other detachments of Einsatzgruppe D, the policemen of both police battalions and the detached members of FGA 683 and GFP 647, Braune’s Sonderkommando 11b and Ohlendorf’s staff of Einsatzgruppe D continued the execution on 11 December 1941.
then one COULD argue it was possible to kill well over a thousand Jews in Simferopol. And if that did happen, should that not be put in this thread?
Legitimate Nazi Atrocities