Did the holocaust actually happen? -- LiveWire Teen Forums

Quote: from jakelong at 1:26 pm on June 9, 2008

And it don't mean the ppl who identified it as a furnace was wrong or lied neither.

I'd imagine it is a furnace. Just because people say it's a furnace doesn't mean it was used to burn people in them.

Also, remember that it might have been used to burn bodies that died of disease in the labor camps in order to prevent the spread to disease (thus keeping the labor from getting too sick)? That could be just as much of a possibility as using the furnaces to burn the bodies that died from gassings. There's a wide range of these that these furnaces could have been used for - it's presumptuous to say that they were used for only one thing based on a picture alone.

I mean you could say the same about anything in history. Why only doubt the holocaust?

What makes you think I only doubt the holocaust?

To be honest, the holocaust is the one genocide out of them all that we're all confronted with the most. It's no surprise that the holocaust gets more attention and deniers than something such as the Armenian genocide.

so when ppl say oh number of ppl was killed in the civil war you dont believe either? or when ppl say few ppl died in Hiroshima you gonna doubt it too?

As far as the Civil War went, there were records of people who were in the Union and Confederate armies, as well as body counts. Of course, this only counts deaths in the armies - it doesn't count civilian deaths. In which case censuses before the Civil War are compared to censuses after the Civil War and, judging by about how many people died off between the censuses, they'd make an estimation of the total US citizens and residents who died that would be fairly accurate.

But you see, the problem with relying on census data for the holocaust is that there were only national censuses and the Nazis made the the holocaust a European wide tragedy. As a result, countries like Poland only count how many Jews they had prior to WWII and how many they had afterwards, disregarding that the displaced Jews may have wound up migrating elsewhere in Europe or to Israel rather than returning back to Poland. The total all the European countries came up with combined was about 6 million. Again, they disregard any migrations that may have occurred either immediately before or after the holocaust, hence why it's unreliable.

Sure but that dont mean no one died in the camps neither.

Jake, do me a favor and please read what I fucking say. I never denied people dying in the camps. I merely question whether it's as much as 6 million.

Why? I mean why doubt it? Many ppl have reported it.

How can you actually report a total of 6 million people getting gassed or whatever? You can report gassings, but you can't report a total of 6 million people over many different camps.

Theres been plenty of survvors talking about what happened in the camps? why doubt them?

Trauma has a tendency to skew peoples' memories. There have been studies on how valid peoples' memories were to memories such where they were when JFK was shot, when 9/11 happened, etc. As it turns out, about half of everybody's memories were skewed in some manner.

Now, the holocaust was quite a bit different because it took place over a period of years rather than just a day. This is where studies of memory repression comes in, where peoples' minds automatically repress their memories of the event from the trauma and as a result, when they look back on everything, it's sort of a blur to them.

I'm not saying that everybody who experienced the holocaust was wrong - in fact, I'd imagine much of what they had to say was valid and I honestly doubt they'd lie. But when they talk about the gassings that occurred, of which they never saw (because they were never gassed) nor did they clean the bodies up, I get skeptical. Combine that with repression and potential rumors that could have gone around both in the camps about such things and after the event (I doubt it would be beyond the comprehension of Jews that the Nazis would do all they could to kill them), and you get some reason to doubt everything these testimonials say.

Do you go around counting the number of bodies in Japan to prove to yourself that a lot of ppl died in Hiroshima?

When I say "hard proof," I generally mean proof that isn't subject to very much error. Scientific tests, census data (except in the case of the holocaust for the reasons I described above), etc. all count as this.

ok. well the same can be said of all other wars and massacres. the fact remains that its a lot of civilians dying and many of them WAS intentionally especially towards the end.

You mean the hundreds of thousands of civilians of Dresden and Tokyo dying from being firebombed by the Allies?

Remember, census figures and body counts for soldiers. These are imperative to estimating the actual number of deaths in a war or massacre. Of course, it doesn't apply in the case of the holocaust because so many Jews were transported beyond national boundaries and, before and after the holocaust, many decided to migrate to different places (especially Israel) rather than return home.

So you think the holocaust is AS unbelievable as spaceships going around the world? A war occured. Many many civilians died just because they was the "wrong" religion. That not enough for you?

It was just an exaggurated example, Jake. The holocaust certainly is more plausible than that, but I have pointed out some possible errors in the figure of 6 million dead Jews which have not been properly addressed.

But it does worry me when you say that Jews were killed for being the wrong religion. Did you forget that the Nazis believed that it didn't matter whether you actualy practiced Judaism or not - all that mattered was that you were of Jewish descent and refused to integrate into the national culture.

What more do you want? I mean when ppl say 8,000 Tasmanians died in Australia or 18 million Irish peasants died in the famine do you go with a magnifier digging in the dirt and say "no no no its not 18 million its 3 million and the irish lied"? You just refer to what the historian and reseachers and people say, I mean when theres massacres its no easy saying exactly how many ppl died. But that dont mean the numbers are wrong either.

? Why are you criticizing me for trying to figure out exactly how many people died? Is it really such a bad thing to analyze the evidence we have available and point out possible errors in them?

The fact that the holocaust has become so scrutinized over the last 50 years is the biggest reason why I prefer not to trust historians on what they have to say about the matter. Remember, just thinking of questioning any evidence on the holocaust and holding the holocaust to the same standards of historical skepticism kills your career and, in many European countries, gets you thrown in jail.

I just dont get why ppl believe some numbers in history but have trouble with "6 million jew died" like just because the info comes from jews then it MUST be a lie or a joke.

My skepticism mainly comes from the fact that it's difficult for people to freely express their feelings and thoughts on the holocaust without facing harsh criticism by a mass of people who will label them anti-semites if their feelings and thoughts are contrary to popular opinion.

but what do you base that on? I mean in order to doubt something you ahve to have some reason some idea of WHY it is doubtful in the first place.

If you've read everything I've said in this post and the previous posts, you'd see exactly why.

Otherwise you can also say we never went to the moon.

That's pretty easy to prove since we do have videos of that and can read plenty about the environment on the moon which supports the details shown in that video.

It is ok to doubt but you cant just doubt right off the bat with no reason when there's plenty of corpses that was found by the GIs

Again, why do they have to be gassings? I've said many times that many in the labors camps died of diseases, which is honestly no surprise given the conditions of those camps.

and all the reports from the survivors and everything.

Advice: Never take testimonials at face value. The fact that many of these testimonials occurred many, many years after the holocaust just makes their memories of the events even more questionable. Lots of psychological trama can skew their memories of the holocaust.

It's funny because in any court case you see where somebody is recalling a traumatic experience many years in the past, you'll see this same argument used with many psychologists backing the lawyer up. Now why don't we hold holocaust testimonials to the same standard, I wonder?

What is it that makes you doubt what the historians and scientists have said?

Already explained countless times.

at the end of the war all bets were off. they wanted slave labor with the jews but at the end of the war they felt they were gonna lose anyway so they wanted to kill them all off.

If they really did, then how did so many survive? The Nazis didn't have to endure the death marches. They could have just shot every Jew or gassed them with no problems if they truly wanted them all dead. It wouldn't have been that difficult for them.

What was going on in WWII was not the most logical thing in the world.

I call bullshit on that for a wide variety of reasons. The Nazis did everything they could to maximize the war effort. Intentionally killing off their slave labor force would hinder that, so it was in their interest to keep their slave labor force alive. At the end of the war when things looked pretty grim for the Nazis, it's no surprise that they put their own soldiers and citizens before the Jews, hence many starving and dying around the end of it all. But notice that they all weren't just gassed. Why is that?

Sure but the famine they made them go through was also intentional for some of them.

Intentional to what extent? To see the Jews starve for the lulz? Or more of a "better you than me" attitude?

Some nazis didn't want that because because they wanted to keep their slaves but some of them did want to kill all jews.

I'd imagine there were a few who wanted all Jews dead and those who had no qualms about Jews getting killed for the fun of it. But thus far, there has been no proof of a Nazi party policy to kill all Jews. This is key.

The same happened in the US with American Indians if you want to know.

Eh, very different situations to be quite honest. The tragedy we're talking about occurred over a period of about 4 or 5 years. The tragedy of the Native Americans began right at the beginning of European contact to fairly recently in history.

The closest you could compare the Nazi labor camps to are the American's Japanese internment camps, although even then that's pretty farfetch'd because the Americans didn't use the Japanese for slave labor like the Nazis did with the Jews.

I dont say its good or bad. I just say you gotta have some reason too on WHY you doubt and not just say I doubt because its cool to doubt.

Indeed. And I have given you my reasons, so I expect you to fully answer them with no twisting of my words nor any dodging of what I have brought up via red herrings.

I mean if you really want to search the truth then you gotta read all the stuff thats been written.

What makes you think that I have not read a lot of what is written about the holocaust?

Also the holocaust denial laws are like recent. People was working on what happened from 1945 to 1990 without nobody giving any problems. The info is all around if you want it.

And what makes you think that holocaust denial was any more accepted in the 1970s than they are now? Holocaust denial laws in Europe came about largely as a result of many Europeans believing that all holocaust deniers are crazy anti-semites and through prohibiting holocaust denial, they would get rid of these guys and the government would protect them from these people. Prohibitions of holocaust denial have little to do with trying to legislate the truth. Furthermore, even if it does have anything to do with legislating the truth, it shows nothing but intolerance of criticism and holding the truth to honest standards.

Now if you good data that shows theres some reason to question the numbers then thats different.

What information can I bring? The burden of proof rests on those suggesting that the number of Jews who died were as high as 6 million. And when they do show their evidence, I, as I have explained in this topic, have pointed out the errors in the evidence, suggesting that the actual number of Jews who died would be less than that. The one making the claim always must defend their position, no matter how old or how widely accepted this claim may be. Thus when I question the claim of 6 million Jews being killed in the holocaust, it is not up to me to dismantle it - it is up to the proponents of this number to uphold it, and if it's as obvious and undeniable as everybody says it is, then why have I not seen anybody present any convincing evidence or information?

Remember, Jake, I'm not trying to push any actual numbers myself. I'm merely pointing out the errors in the evidence for the number of 6 million provided and suggesting that according to these errors, the actual number must be smaller. Thus I have no evidence - merely errors which I'm pointing out in the evidence that has been presented.

But you know if its 6 million or 60 000 ppl including old ppl and kids that was burned to death just because they was jewish then it is STILL horrible.

What makes you think that I don't think that the holocaust is horrible? I refer to it as a tragedy. I don't deny that Jews were deported to labor camps during WWII and that many died there. I'm not being unreasonable with what I'm saying.

BTW, give me some more time to answer your other post. I haven't the time right now.

Post edited at 9:47 pm on June 11, 2008 by Bud2400

Quote: from jakelong at 1:48 pm on June 9, 2008

Well they had to lure them to it first. I mean even if they was prisoners if they found was was gonna happen for sure they might have done something early on like rise up out something. Also the ppl living around the place might have been horrified about it.

There were rumors going around the camps about gas chambers. Supposedly entire groups of people would be taken for a shower and never come back. Obviously it scared the inmates of these camps to bits, yet nobody did anything about it, which is partly the result of nobody directly seeing these gas chambers and people dying in them, but more importantly that nobody really could do anything even if they had formed a large group.

I doubt a Jewish uprising in these camps was that big a concern. I mean, what did the Jews have to fight with? Fists and large numbers of people who had no fear of machine guns firing away at them? The Nazis had the Jews whipped in every way possible. Given the conditions of the camps alone, if they didn't rebel then, they weren't going to even in the face of death.

It was one thing to put Jews in a camp but to slaughter them like sheep its kind of different. There was alot of ppl around and they was catholic and believers and they might not have liked the naizs if they found what the nazis really did.

Of course, don't forget that Hitler and many of the Nazis were also Catholic. Catholics and other believers seeing the realities of the camps wouldn't have been an issue, but it's generally society as a whole. The majority of society did not care that Jews and other groups were rounded up and thrown into slave labor at these camps - in fact, many approved of this! This wasn't a secret, and if the Nazis truly meant to kill all of them, I don't see why they'd keep it a secret either. After all, they advocated killing all communists, which weren't necessarily traitors to the German government (as they advocated killing Polish and especially Russian communists). Moreover, the Nazis basically did define the Jews as traitors, leeching off German society.

When the nazis kill communists or resistance fighters or jews they usually say those people are traitors or enemies of the state. They shoot them down but as enemies. But if it was found out that they burned women and kids to death then people around might react differently.

See what I said above. It wouldn't have been too difficult for the Nazis to justify the deaths of these women and children as they'd probably link all of this to genetics, hence why they wouldn't hide it. There probably would have been more disapproval among the German nationals, but I can't imagine it being anything that would create a potential uprising.

The testimonies of survivors and the bones in the furnaces and the burning of people is not "speculation". What is speculation is to say all those ppl made it all up without showing a proof that they lied intentionally.

Remember, I never claimed that these people "lied," but that I am suspicious of any testimony for the same reasons any court of law would be (I explained this in my last post).

Moreover, just because you find bones in furnaces doesn't mean people were burned in them alive or even corpses which died from gassings were burned in them. Dead bodies that died of contagious diseases being burnt in them to prevent the spread of disease to their slave labor force would have been a far more plausible suggestion. Of course, it doesn't mean that this is what happened, but the fact that you can interpret it this way with as few problems as saying that people were gassed and then burned in them leads me to believe that there isn't enough evidence for the latter assertion, which is the popular one (there also isn't enough evidence for the former assertion either, which means that it's all inconclusive).

They wanted the stronger jews to be used as slaves. Those that was massacred were the kids the old ppl and those who was too weak or sick.

That's just simply bullshit.

Remember, little kids have little hands. These little hands are very useful for putting together very small parts that an adult with larger hands would have a very difficult time doing.

Moreover, women and older people were often put to sewing together things and other kind of labor like that. Not all slave labor the Nazis put the Jews through was very physical and generally they found a place for everyone, except for the very old who were practically on their death beds, in which case the Nazis probably would have let them die as they'd be a waste of resources, I'll admit.

You heard of the Wannsee protocol. a lot of ppl posted that on the forum. its kinda funny you never heard of that. It shows the intent of the top Nazi brass to kill jews. It also shows that not all Nazis agreed with it for the reasons you mentioned.

I know all about the Wannsee Conference. I see all this crap put out about it saying that "all the Nazis knew what Heydrich meant" (which is one of those no duh obvious statements), but then suddenly jumping to the assertion that Heydrich meant the death of all Jews. Note how what was said at Wannsee never explicitly decided upon killing all Jews, but rather, detailed their relocation east which never happened due to circumstances on the eastern front. They did say "treat all Jews accordingly," but honestly, how out of context can you take "treat accordingly" and still make it look accurate?

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work onroads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.

Essentially what I explained above - detailing their relocation east, in a rather cold way considering their lack of concern over how many people would actually die in such an event.

The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

Note the part I italicized and underlined. If released. It sounds more as if they're explaining how dangerous it would be to just send these Jews east and release them from German captivity. In other words, they're referring more to how important it is to keep the Jews under German rule whether directly or indirectly. Just that second half of the sentence rules out death meaning for "treat accordingly." I'd imagine "treat accordingly" meant something more along the lines of more enforcement by SS officers to keep these Jews in line, or at worst, sterilization (remember, the Nazis were big on eugenics).

I certainly see no evidence of the Nazis advocating for death from this alone and to say they are is dishonest at best.

In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities

Remember Jake, "final solution" does not necessarily mean the death of Jews. When you read what you have quoted from the Wannsee Conference with the preconceived notion that the final solution was about killing all Jews, it's no surprise that you'd think they were advocating the death of all Jews and disregard what I noted above.

Remember that the "final solution" to the Jewish question has always been about getting the Jews out of Germany. At first it was about moving the Jews to Madagascar (as was also advocated by Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism) but could not happen due to WWII making such a relocation impossible. Then it became, during this conference, about moving the Jews east into USSR territory, which also could not happen due to circumstances on the eastern front.

So what happened to the Jews? Well, they were left in the camps they've always been in during the bulk of WWII, and with Nazi Germany retreating back to Germany starting around 1944, the situation became desperate at home in Germany and in the camps, hence less resources being available, meaning even less going to the camps. Hence why the Allies and Soviets saw so many starving and dead Jews when they did liberate these camps. This has been detailed by many different people and should be no surprise. Many died as a result.

With regard to the issue of the effect of the evacuation of Jews on the economy, State Secretary Neumann stated that Jews who are working in industries vital to the war effort, provided that no replacements are available, cannot be evacuated.
SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Heydrich indicated that these Jews would not be evacuated according to the rules he had approved for carrying out the evacuations then underway.
State Secretary Dr. Buehler stated that the General Government would welcome it if the final solution of this problem could be begun in the General Government, since on the one hand transportation does not play such a large role here nor would problems of labor supply hamper this action. Jews must be removed from the territory of the General Government as quickly as possible, since it is especially here that the Jew as an
epidemic carrier represents an extreme danger and on the other hand he is causing permanent chaos in the economic structure of the country through continued black market dealings. Moreover,
of the approximately 2 1/2 million Jews concerned, the majority is unfit for work.

Sounds more like they were working out the practicality of moving such a large number of Jews from Germany to the east and the economic consequences of it would be. In no place did they even hint at killing the Jews, though. They did mention that the Jews were dangerous because, remember, the Nazis claimed that the Jews were leeching off of German society and were responsible for the loss of WWI. As ridiculous as these assertions sound, though, what was explained in those paragraphs you quoted seems like nothing more than a desire for Germany to be rid of Jews.

The only part that could be taken as implying for the death of Jews (and this implying would be a major stretch) would be their mention of 2.5 million Jews involved in the move east, the majority of which being unfit for work. Although remember: what kind of work is being mentioned here? It doesn't say in what you quoted, although I get the sense that they're referring to something more specific. It sounds like the Nazis had something more specific in mind for "work" in the east.

its ok but do you the same thing for ALL events in history or just the Holocaust?

Jake, I'm holding the holocaust to the same standards I do with everything else in history. I can't tell you how many primary sources I've searched through trying to detail what exactly the medieval perception of "chivalry" was since I thought most scholars had a tendency to mix it up with courtly love, which would be true to an extent since courtly love and chivalry did get fused together, but during the High Middle Ages? I think not (though what I and others who have studied this can disagree since it's all interpretation - The Song of Roland, written in the 12th century, is a great source of what the ideal chivalrous warrior is like, who the main enemy to Christians are, as well as (in my opinion) criticisms of chivalry by the author).

But notice that other most events in history, such as the American Civil War, Rwanda Genocide, etc. do not have the same kinds of incosistencies and sketchy evidence that the holocaust does.

And if it helps any, I'm not skeptical of just the holocaust but also of the Armenian genocide, but I know far less about the Armenian genocide than I do about the holocaust (other than that evidence for it is also scrutinized, albeit more heavily than the holocaust since it's not such a sin to deny the Armenian genocide), so I usually don't make any claims about it one way or the other.

Post edited at 5:44 pm on June 12, 2008 by Bud2400

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