The gassings?  The Nazi intent to kill all Jews?  The numbers of Jews and others who died?  These are all things which I remain skeptical on as I have not seen them proven beyond any doubt.  I believe that the holocaust ought to be held up to the same standards of historical skepticism that the rest of history is and believe it's bullshit that there are actually laws out there which make denying the holocaust a crime, as well as idiots who try to claim that holocaust deniers are anti-semitic (which often times they are, but certainly isn't the cause of holocaust denial for everyone).

Of course, you'll never see a real history professor actually hold the holocaust to historical skepticism for these very reasons, as by doing so, it's effectively career suicide.  Hence my whole skepticism over most information surrounding the holocaust.

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I believe that the holocaust - as in the Nazis rounding up the Jews and others the Nazis hated and forcing them into labor camps with extremely poor conditions - did occur. There's pretty undeniable evidence for that.

The gassings? The Nazi intent to kill all Jews? The numbers of Jews and others who died? These are all things which I remain skeptical on as I have not seen them proven beyond any doubt. I believe that the holocaust ought to be held up to the same standards of historical skepticism that the rest of history is and believe it's bullshit that there are actually laws out there which make denying the holocaust a crime, as well as idiots who try to claim that holocaust deniers are anti-semitic (which often times they are, but certainly isn't the cause of holocaust denial for everyone).

Of course, you'll never see a real history professor actually hold the holocaust to historical skepticism for these very reasons, as by doing so, it's effectively career suicide. Hence my whole skepticism over most information surrounding the holocaust.

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It's career suicide because it's like denying the existance of the sun.

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"It's not about a salary, it's all about reality"
KRS-One

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It's career suicide because it's like denying the existance of the sun.

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It depends on how much they're being skeptical of.

The ones who claim that the holocaust never happened and was all fake are full of shit and have nothing to back them up - this much is obvious.

The ones who question the gas chambers, the actual estimated number of 6 million dead Jews, and all that actually have some merit because there is only indirect evidence of this. The German and Polish governments refuse to allow anybody to investigate this matter and take soil samples from the concetration camps, and doing so is a jailable offense. This is where I begin getting skeptical of the information put out there.

This doesn't mean that the Jews and others the Nazis persecuted weren't put under any kind of hell, mind you. No matter how you look at it, people were put into labor camps and endured awfully poor living conditions, leading to quite a few deaths regardless of any gassings or not.

Post edited at 1:40 am on June 6, 2008 by Bud2400

The difference between the holocaust and 9/11 is that we saw 9/11 happen on the tv, and we can verify the existence of those towers before the attack.

The only evidence for the holocaust are verbal testimonies and changes in the population figures of european jews.  There are scientific tests that could prove or disprove the story of the Holocaust beyond a reasonable doubt, but the governments won't allow them to take place.  If the story is true, then there is nothing to lose.

Confiscation of jewish property, and being relocated into labour camps goes along with the other acts carried out by the NSDAP.  The slaughter of this labor pool, and more importantly, the use of valuable resources such as the gasses to carry out this slaughter, is far too illogical to match up with the MO of the Germans.

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whoisabs i'm not sure
Guess who's back?

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 The numbers of Jews and others who died

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as I have not seen them proven beyond any doubt.

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I believe that the holocaust ought to be held up to the same standards of historical skepticism that the rest of history is  

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Its NOT held to the same standard. Theres ppl totally denying it like its a hoax. Nobody says oh the crusades didn't exist. Nobody says the massacres of protestants or catholics in england didnt occur, Nobody says the inquisition was nice and great and no one died or it was invented by protestants. So why they say the Holocaust was a hoax and ppl belive it?

And if you want ppl to be able to criticize and look into it without getting upset maybe you gotta wait till all the the survivors die, Of course then the holohoax tards can go "oh theres no proof" etc...Fuck if all the pictures and corpses and teeth and hair are not enough to prove theres a holocaust and ppl was burned in the furnace then theres no way to convince them anyway.

Post edited at 2:00 am on June 6, 2008 by jakelong

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"Everyone helpin' each other whenever they can we makin' it happen, from nothin' to somethin'
That's how we be survivin'" - BEP

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They were cooking bread in there?

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Hard to say.  Where's your source for the image?  What exactly are those?  Incinerators?

Remember, just because I can't exactly identify what's going on in the picture doesn't mean that it's a picture depicting the genocide of the Jewish race by default.  Just because you can make it seem as such doesn't necessarily make it so.

Moreover, if they are incinerators, there is a wide variety of uses for them besides just fitting them with human bodies, especially considering all the industrial waste that would be produced at a labor camp as huge as places like Auschwitz were.

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Why you doubt the numbers? tell me what makes you think the numbers are wrong.

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It brings up this point:

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Prove that it was NOT 6 million.

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First of all, I'd like to see hard proof that it was 6 million.  All I've really seen was the fact that the Jewish populations before 1939 and after 1945 in certain European countries combined accounted for that much.  I'm sure that a fair chunk of it was from deaths during WWII and the holocaust, but it also seems to ignore the fact that there would be widespread displacement of Jews after such an event and thus a lot of migration going on which wasn't accounted for.

Remember, I'm not denying that anybody died, but am being skeptical that it was as much as 6 million.  Without hard proof, I refuse to cite any figures and pretend that I do know.  For now, I'm merely content in saying that a lot died.

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Why it has to be "proven"?

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Am I reading this right or are you really asking why history needs to be proven in order to believe it?

I mean, I could claim that 1000 years ago, the world was a rich and vast land filled with airships, incredible wealth and prosperity, spacefaring technology, enlightened people, and no poverty.  Of course without proof, it's a little difficult to take my claims seriously...

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Its NOT held to the same standard.

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Exactly, and I disagree with that.  Is the holocaust not a historical event?  Should it not be evaluated by the same standards all other historical events are?

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Fuck if all the pictures and corpses and teeth and hair are not enough to prove theres a holocaust and ppl was burned in the furnace then theres no way to convince them anyway.

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Abs and I aren't denying that Jews weren't killed during the holocaust.  Read more carefully.  We merely declare that the figure of 6 million dead Jews is not entirely accurate and are skeptical of the Nazis' intent on killing as many Jews as possible because it runs contrary to all logic.

Moreover, it's pretty foolish to deny that Jews weren't relocated to labor camps to labor in harsh conditions.  Malnutrition, exhaustion, disease, and psychological trauma on the part of the victims would all arise as a result and take the lives of many.  Nobody here is trying to defend the Nazis by being skeptical, but merely questioning just how exaggurated some statements and figures thrown around about the holocaust may be.  I actually believe questions like these to be good for it forces us to defend our assertions with actual relevant evidence and why I have such a great disdain for laws that prohibit holocaust denial.

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If the story is true, then there is nothing to lose.

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I've actually spoken to people from Germany about this matter.  They don't seem to view the law prohibiting holocaust denial as an attempt to uphold the truth, but more like an attempt to get rid of the people denying the holocaust, who they'd consider to be anti-semitic loons.

Many continental Europeans seem to have this notion that the government should protect their citizens from potentially dangerous hate groups, such as the KKK (at least the racist lynching of blacks KKK they hear so much about), anti-semitic groups which they'd link to holocaust deniers, etc.  I think holocaust denial laws in Europe are largely a result of the different ways Europeans view their governments, compared to Americans and even Brits.

Although the German and Polish governments prohibiting scientific testing of the soil in the concentration camps does raise an eyebrow, I will admit, but even then, most Europeans defend that on the basis of some group coming in, testing the grounds, and producing some results that will mislead people from the "truth."  But then you must ask them, how do they already have a preconceived notion of what the "truth" is before they have any hard evidence for this truth?

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I believe that the holocaust - as in the Nazis rounding up the Jews and others the Nazis hated and forcing them into labor camps with extremely poor conditions - did occur. There's pretty undeniable evidence for that.

The gassings? The Nazi intent to kill all Jews? The numbers of Jews and others who died? These are all things which I remain skeptical on as I have not seen them proven beyond any doubt. I believe that the holocaust ought to be held up to the same standards of historical skepticism that the rest of history is and believe it's bullshit that there are actually laws out there which make denying the holocaust a crime, as well as idiots who try to claim that holocaust deniers are anti-semitic (which often times they are, but certainly isn't the cause of holocaust denial for everyone).

Of course, you'll never see a real history professor actually hold the holocaust to historical skepticism for these very reasons, as by doing so, it's effectively career suicide. Hence my whole skepticism over most information surrounding the holocaust.

---

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I believe that the holocaust - as in the Nazis rounding up the Jews and others the Nazis hated and forcing them into labor camps with extremely poor conditions - did occur. There's pretty undeniable evidence for that.

The gassings? The Nazi intent to kill all Jews? The numbers of Jews and others who died? These are all things which I remain skeptical on as I have not seen them proven beyond any doubt. I believe that the holocaust ought to be held up to the same standards of historical skepticism that the rest of history is and believe it's bullshit that there are actually laws out there which make denying the holocaust a crime, as well as idiots who try to claim that holocaust deniers are anti-semitic (which often times they are, but certainly isn't the cause of holocaust denial for everyone).

Of course, you'll never see a real history professor actually hold the holocaust to historical skepticism for these very reasons, as by doing so, it's effectively career suicide. Hence my whole skepticism over most information surrounding the holocaust.

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the gassing did happen. The Nazis didn't build gas chambers because they look nice.

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From what I've understood, the gas chambers were basically the shower rooms and instead of water coming out, hydrogen cyanide did.

Of course, it doesn't require much to convert a shower room into a gas chamber like that.  The question I would ask is why would the Nazis try to keep it so hidden if they really did intend to gas all the Jews?  Why wouldn't they make a completely separate chamber for it?  And furthermore, it seems silly even then considering that only authorized personnel were allowed into the concentration camps during the holocaust, so it's not as if they would have anything to hide from civilians (and even if it were open to them, they weren't shy about openly talking about killing groups of people - communists specifically comes to mind, I don't see why they'd be shy about talking about how they want to kill all Jews if they really did) and they certainly weren't planning on losing WWII.

Remember, just because you can make all the pieces fit doesn't necessarily make it true.  It requires more than just speculation to prove something true.

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At the end of the war, they tried to hide the evidence so they gassed as many people as possibe.

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If the Nazis were trying to kill all Jews so they don't tell the world about the horrors they went through, then please explain to me the death marches, where the Nazis marched the Jews from Poland back to Germany in an effort to get away from the approaching Soviets.  Certainly if they wanted them all dead, it would have been easier to just kill them all rather than waste all that effort and slow things down by marching them back to Germany?

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When these camps were liberated the soviets saw piles of dead bodies because they couldn't burn them.

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I have no doubts that there were masses of dead bodies at these camps when the Soviets and Allies came in.  I have no doubts that many, many people in captivity in these camps died of diseases and the like, especially toward the end of the war as things became more desperate and resources (ie. food) became more scarce and even less of it than before going to the prisoners of these camps.  And furthermore, I can't imagine the Nazis really caring about their deaths a whole lot so long as the labor was still in full force, which makes it all the more atrocious and why I think you can still claim that it's a genocide without the gassings or Nazi intent to kill all Jews.

But it is exactly those gassings and intent to kill all Jews which I question.  The evidence for those two things are very sketchy at best.  You can call me wrong for saying so, but I prefer not to blindly accept whatever I am told and remain skeptical to all things without solid evidence.