 |
|
I would be remiss to stop there. Crowell's linguistic arguments are
confusing and also require detangling, and here the reader who does not
know German may need assistance.
He wishes to prove that the noun "Vergasungsapparat" refers to a
delousing device but has no evidence for this claim. We must be careful
to distinguish the word's meaning from what it refers to. Its
meaning is:
- Vergasung - "gassing," i.e., to expose someone or something to gas
- Apparat - device, apparatus, appliance, or machine.
The word (removed from any context) means simply a device which
exposes someone or something to gas: thus our term "gassing device" is
a fine translation.
It will not take long to find some context for the word, after which
we will be able to make an informed decision about what it refers
to: whether these were delousing gassing devices, or (as they
happen to be) homicidal gassing devices.
As my
first response
pointed out, Crowell simply had no evidence that the former was the
case. That does not mean his hypothesis is necessarily wrong (though it
happens to be). It just means there is no evidence.
So, without any linguistic or contextual evidence that the "gassing
devices" must be for lice, he turns to supposition that such
might be the case:
I would point out however first of all that the "Unterkünfte"
and the "Vergasungsapparate" are discussed in tandem, and in subsequent
sentences there are at least two more references to "Apparate". Now
what might these words mean, based on contemporary documents
or other sources? And, in terms of my explicit argument, what
might they mean in a disinfection context?
He asks entirely the wrong questions above (emphasis added). It is
not especially useful to look at what the words might mean
based on usage in other documents. It is surely more important to look
at what they do mean in the very document they appear in.
He makes his case largely based on the fact that related words
("vergasen," "Apparate") are used in describing delousing chambers. But
since the root words are quite common, this proves nothing. He writes,
The words "Vergasungsapparate" and particularly
"Apparate" are common in a disinfection context...
but the first is a lie - he cannot locate a single occurrence of
"Vergasungsapparate" [4]
- and the second is meaningless - "Apparate" ("devices") is a common
word in a hundred other contexts as well. He goes on:
Such "Apparate" in such "Unterkuenfte" were common in the German
Labor Service...
The word "Unterkünfte" simply means
"barracks." [5]
He has found a document describing some rather ordinary "devices" in
"barracks" and concludes from this that all devices, if mentioned in
the same sentence as barracks, must be harmless!
And again, he is only making a case for what the words
could refer to (but don't). If we want to know what a word
could mean, it suffices to consult dictionaries. But we want
to know what it does refer to, in a particular document, so we
must actually understand and analyze that very document.
Crowell cannot do this because it immediately produces an answer
which he dislikes.
Distortion. Crowell distorts my meaning to find supposed
support for his thesis. I wrote that the letter does not explain
whether the gassing devices (Vergasungsapparate) and "shelters"
(Unterkünfte):
...are related (apart from being, presumably, used in the
same camp or same region).
(Emphasis added.) Crowell falsely summarized this:
...the author of this piece comes so close to agreeing with me, as
he ... implies that "Vergasungsapparate" may well have been part
of the "Unterkünfte" in question, in which case they could
not have been gas vans.
In fact I was arguing that that exact claim was "specious." I went
out of my way to point out that it was not specified that the
devices were in the shelters, that there was no stated relation between
them, and that one could only presume (not know) that they
were even to be used in the same region. In response, I am accused of
"implying" that they "may well have" been part of one another. This is
false: that implication is nowhere in what I wrote.
This is an especially egregious tactic because he does not link to
or quote my words. His reader must trust him.
Misreading. Crowell writes:
The first paragraph of this letter is specifically about impressing
Jews into the labor service in Riga and Minsk, and therefore the Germans
would have had to construct delousing huts for them...
He has this exactly backwards. The first paragraph
discusses
how some Jews will be sent to Riga and Minsk; other
Jews will be impressed into labor to the East. It specifically says (in
the next paragraph which Crowell refuses to connect) that those Jews
who cannot be used for labor (in other words, the ones sent to
Riga and Minsk) will be eradicated - using the "Brackian remedy."
His explanations for the supposed meaning of this document are
noteworthy for his glib claim that its "context" includes testimony
from Bruno Tesch in a postwar trial. Apparently his idea of "context"
will extend to postwar testimony when it suits his case, but not to
successive sentences in the same document!
Ignoring documents. His dismissal of all corroborating
evidence is also noteworthy for yet another distortion of the facts:
...the 'gas vans' are not 'Vergasungsapparate' and that
transformation does not take place no matter how many eyewitness
testimonies one cites about the existence of gas vans.
Note that trial testimony is considered insignificant, now that it
is not from a source he likes. But worse: I had cited two pieces of
documentary evidence, one stating explicitly "The gas van Pol 71463 is
ready. It will be sent to Riga with its driver." Why is he suddenly
free to ignore this? Because it is from a collection which also
includes "some material" he says is from "Soviet show trial
provenance." No other comment. His work is published as part of CODOH's
"Inconvenient
History"
- how ironic that he so easily dismisses and ignores inconvenient
evidence.
Ignoring arguments. His other objections can be nullified by
repeating what I wrote earlier (he did not address this):
Even if the letter had requested stationary gas chambers
specifically, such as those Brack's office had constructed for the
euthanasia program, it would not be surprising and certainly not
contradictory if, between October and December, someone had proposed
and enacted an alternate plan. The Wetzel-Lohse letter is a request for
people to get in touch, not a design specification. It is even marked
as a "draft."
This letter was only a proposal. Not all proposals get adopted
(though Wetzel's was); not all proposals are adopted in exactly the
same form that they were written.
The proper context for this, like any other historical document, is
on a much larger scale than this sentence- and word-level quibbling that
we have been dragged down into. We should not waste our time finding
documents on stamp-collecting or the State Labor Service or other
mundane activities that happen to contain some variation on the one
word "device."
Instead, we should seek out other facts and documents that are
related to the Wetzel-Lohse letter's undisputed subject matter:
- the solution to the Jewish Question,
- Brack's area of expertise,
- the camps that were being set up for Jews,
- the sorts of things that Eichmann would be asked to approve,
- and the possible ways that the Nazis could murder Jews in the area
of Vilna that did not involve bloody public massacres.
All of these subjects converge on the use of gas chambers, including
mobile gas chambers known as gas vans, for homicidal purposes. Three
documents on gas vans in particular are now available on the Holocaust
History Project website:
- March 26, 1942:
a letter from Walter Rauff describes the need for special vans
("Sonderwagen") in the Mauthausen concentration camp. The meaning of
this is made clear by the suggestion that bottled carbon monoxide be
used until the special vans are available. Bottled CO was the method
used to kill the handicapped in the T-4 program which Brack
headed.
The reappearance of the word "remedy" in this letter, referring to
poison gas, swiftly silences Crowell's
protest
about that word in the Wetzel-Lohse letter.
- April 11, 1942:
a letter from an SS Major-General to the chief of Himmler's personal
staff describes how he has shot all the male Jews he could find, and
will soon clear out the camp of women and children with the aid of a
"delousing van" (Entlausungswagen).
(Incidentally, the word "delousing van" appears in quote marks in
the original. By showing that delousing was used as a cover and a
euphemism for killing, those two punctuation marks by themselves drive
a stake through Crowell's thesis.)
- June 5, 1942:
a letter sent to Walter Rauff describing in great detail the special
vans ("Spezialwagen") and their roles in killing ("processing") 97,000
Jews ("subjects"). Five pages long and horribly detailed, the meaning
is impossible to misinterpret.
If one is interested in examining the context of the Wetzel-Lohse
letter, these documents are a good place to start. (For a more
well-rounded study, turn to Eugen Kogon et al., Nazi Mass
Murder, and Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi
Genocide.)
The most important feature of his commentary is Crowell's inability
- twice now - to quote more than two words in a row from the
Wetzel-Lohse letter. I challenge him to reprint the entire letter,
without omission, adding only short interruptions between sentences to
summarize what his interpretations are. I do not think he will
accept. If he does this using an accurate translation, I do not
anticipate needing to respond further, as the document itself will
likely debunk his claims.
I further challenge him and CODOH to crosslink from his reply to the
webpages he is replying to.
Finally, regarding his repeated protest that I have presented ad
hominem attacks: this is done not out of malice, but necessity. I
continue to maintain that Crowell argues his case dishonestly. This is
a simple document to understand and it is only through complex
machinations that he can misinterpret it. He is not unintelligent, nor
too terribly unfamiliar with the historical context. His distortions
can therefore only be deliberate.
To point this out is not to expose him to personal attack. He hides
behind a pseudonym; what would be the point? If my goal were personal
destruction I would attack him, not his false name.
In responding to his analysis of NO-365, I have two goals. The first
is to affirm that the document is valid, and means what it means, by
rebutting an attack on it.
The second is to show that the author of Samuel Crowell's large
work,
The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes,
is not merely biased but deliberately deceptive. It only takes one
solid example to demonstrate that the remainder of the work is not to
be trusted. NO-365 is one such example. His latest response has been
another. Given someone who distorts my words from contradiction into
agreement,
how can he be trusted not to distort his other sources?
I will probably not have time to address the bulk of his work in the
near future, much as I would like to. Until I do, having shown its
author's dishonesty to my own satisfaction, I will not lose much sleep
over what it purports to prove.
Appendix I: Samuel Crowell's Response
Only minor corrections to the HTML formatting have been made.
Response to J. McCarthy on NO-365, The Wetzel-Lohse
Correspondence
February 7, 1999
Dear CODOH:
Thank you for forwarding to me the response to my analysis of the
Wetzel-Lohse correspondence in "The Gas Chamber of Sherlock
Holmes" as found on The Holocaust-History Project. I would make
the following comments.
The author of the piece accuses me of
many errors, and furthermore, claims that these are not mistakes but
rather "examples of intellectual dishonesty." I note in
passing the remarkable need for the author to spice his writing with
ad hominems.
The text itself contains four errors
that my analysis is supposed to contain. I will discuss each of these
in turn, but first I would like to recapitulate what I wrote:
"One example concerns a draft memo, the
so-called Wetzel-Lohse correspondence, concerning conditions around
Riga, and entered into the Nuremberg Military Tribunal as NO-365. The
draft letter mentions putting large numbers of Jews into the Labor
service, and discusses the need for building the necessary
"Unterkünfte" with the appropriate
"vergasungsapparate". In the context of the
disinfection literature, this is clearly a reference to a Labor Service
hut that would be equipped with the standard Entwesungskammern for
delousing clothing. Yet this same document has been occasionally put
forth as evidence of a homicidal gassing program, even though there is
no material or documentary support for that interpretation, and even
though there never were any gas chambers in Riga."
There are three judgments of fact in
the above paragraph. - First, that in the context of the
disinfection literature, this draft memo is about delousing chambers in
labor service huts.
- Second, that there is no material or documentary support for the
interpretation that this document is about gas exterminations.
- Third, that there were no homicidal gas chambers in Riga.
The author questions the first
and second judgments of fact, but does not contest the third. I
maintain that the first and second judgments remain secure, and that
there is nothing in his critique to confound them.
Now to deal with the claims
seriatim.
Claim #1
The author's first claim is that I am wrong in asserting that the
"Vergasungsapparate" discussed in the text are
delousing chambers. He writes "He [Crowell] simply has no evidence
for this assertion." He then goes on to challenge, "If the
word has an ordinary meaning, it should not be hard to find in ordinary
documents."
In response to this I can only say
that the author apparently did not read the earlier sections of my
essay, where the terminology of disinfection is clearly described.
I would point out however first of all
that the "Unterkünfte" and the
"Vergasungsapparate" are discussed in tandem, and in
subsequent sentences there are at least two more references to
"Apparate". Now what might these words mean, based on
contemporary documents or other sources? And, in terms of my explicit
argument, what might they mean in a disinfection context?
As Section 3 of my essay makes clear,
"vergasen" is a common verb used for fumigation at
least since 1914, "Apparate" is the standard term for
delousing chambers or fumigation vaults, and there are even
"Vergasungsapparaturen" specifically discussed in an
article on railway tunnel delousings dated to 1931.
Therefore, the judgment that
"Vergasungspparate" is a reference to delousing
chambers is well supported by contemporary documents, the context of
the disinfection literature, and even by the history of German
disinfection procedures.
In contrast, there is no documentary
reference to "Vergasungsapparate" either before or
during the war which characterizes
"Vergasungsapparate" as "gas vans."
On balance, therefore, I would
continue to maintain that Vergasungsapparate is a reference to
delousing chambers, and so far I have only covered the meaning
of the word itself, saving the wider context of the word's use for a
bit later. Furthermore, there is no question that my original judgment
that "In the context of the disinfection literature, this is
clearly a reference to a Labor Service hut that would be equipped with
the standard Entwesungskammern for delousing clothing."
remains a perfectly acceptable conclusion, provided, of course, that
one knows something about the disinfection literature.
Claim #2
The author then claims that I have ignored the person of Viktor
Brack. The reponse to this is simple. I have not ignored Viktor Brack,
I have not mentioned him because he is not relevant to what we are
discussing, which is whether the "Unterkünfte"
and "Vergasungsapparate" in this document refer to
delousing chambers or "gas vans."
Perhaps what the author has in mind is
the fact that the Germans had a euthanasia program, also known as T-4,
that it was administered by Brack, that some of the persons involved in
T-4 also became involved in the East (although they had other duties as
well), and that it seems likely -- because of this and other documents
-- that there was an intention to euthanize (that is, put to death)
Jews who were of no labor utility to the Reich during the war.
But none of this is disputed by me,
indeed I specifically grant the existence of this euthanasia program.
Of course, it is also said that there were "gas chambers" in
the euthanasia program, so one might conceive a "clang
association" in that respect. But I have discussed that lack of
evidence elsewhere. There is a rather clear reference to
euthanasia in the second paragraph of the letter, but that has no
necessary relationship to these "Vergasungsapparate",
as we shall see.
Claim #4
The author's fourth "error" (I will return to the third
one momentarily) holds that I "dishonestly" ignored the
references to Brack that I have just discussed here, that I told an
"outrageous lie" in claiming that there is no material or
documentary evidence in support of the interpretation of this document
as a document of a mass gassing program.
The refutation of my claim consists
largely of personal attacks, which are irrelevant, as well as a typical
obiter dictum "There can be no denying this ...."
As just noted, I did not discuss
Brack, nor even this document in great detail, but my omissions here
are not germane to the topic at hand. It is clear that there was a
euthanasia program, administered by Brack. It is clear that Jews who
were incapable of working were envisioned as being euthanized. But it
is not clear that the discussion of
"Vergasungsapparate" in this document has anything to
do with either one or the other.
In this respect, the author quotes a
phrase from the second paragraph, to the effect that it is suggested in
this draft letter that Jews unable to work will be "done away with
by means of Brack's gassing apparatus." However the German text
does not say this, describing instead "mit den Brackschen
Hilfmitteln beseitigt." My interpretation of this reference is
that it is being proposed that Jews who cannot work will be disposed of
by use of "Brack's method, means, remedy, or expedient" --
that is, I am assuming that "Brackschen Hilfsmitteln"
is a euphemism for euthanasia, which itself is a euphemism for putting
to death.
Now in my
essay I many times reference the fact that the Germans persecuted, and
killed, Jews. But the point of my essay is not to contest that matter.
The point of my essay is to evaluate the evidence that Jewish people
were systematically killed using poison gas. The evidence for this, by
my analysis, is wanting, and the evidence for such mass gas killings is
not helped by insisting that "Hilfsmittel" is a
code-word for "gassing apparatus." Not only do I
consider this a mistranslation, in the sense that a
"Hilfsmittel" is not usually an object, but also
because the first paragraph of the letter provides a perfectly fine
word for describing these "Vergasungsapparate",
namely, "Apparate"! In other words, I contend that the
first and second paragraphs of this letter are not the same paragraph,
and that "Vergasungsapparat" and
"Hilfsmittel" are not the same thing, either.
Claim #3
The analysis comprising the third "error" is the longest
so I have saved it for last. In this part of his refutation the author
now turns to the subject of gas vans. Here, he wishes to prove that
there were gas vans in Riga, and since this letter discusses
constructing "Vergasungsapparate" in Riga, they must
be the same thing. That at least is the "reasoning" here.
The evidence adduced for this claim
comprises affidavits and testimonies from around 1960, the words of a
witness at a Soviet show trial in late 1944, and a collection of
documents introduced at the International Military Tribunal known as
"PS-501" which contains at least some material from Soviet
show trial provenance.
I do not find this evidence for
"gas vans" convincing, but again, that is not the point,
because the point is that the "gas vans" are not
"Vergasungsapparate" and that transformation does not
take place no matter how many eyewitness testimonies one cites about
the existence of gas vans.
It follows therefore that the author
has still failed to provide any material evidence (that is, the ruins
of a gas chamber in Riga) or documentary evidence (that is, documents
-- not affidavits or testimony) that describe the use of
"Vergasungsapparate" as "gas vans", and
therefore my judgment of fact concerning the absence of such evidence
remains intact.
Summary
To summarize the points of this refutation in their proper
order:
- "Vergasungsapparate" can
only mean "gassing devices" for homicidal gassing,
- I have ignored Viktor Brack, who headed the euthanasia
campaign,
- I have ignored the evidence for gas vans,
- I have ignored the final paragraph, which arguably discusses
euthanasia,
In the end it turns out that
this "correction" of my "errors" and exposure of my
"intellectual dishonesty" consists almost entirely of blaming
me for not emphasizing connections that are important to the author,
but not a single one of which demonstrates any explicit connection of
"Vergasungsapparate" either with a mass gassing
program or "gassing vans."
In this respect I must record my
amusement that the author of this piece comes so close to agreeing with
me, as he, in the closing sentences of his enumeration of my third
"error", implies that "Vergasungsapparate"
may well have been part of the "Unterkünfte" in
question, in which case they could not have been gas vans. Every author
should wish for such "refutations"!
Actually, the author would have done
better to pursue this line of thought, that is, that the document is
about stationary gas chambers. After all, that was the position of the
prosecution at the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in Case 1, "The
Doctors Case":
The proof has shown that Brack himself
advanced plans for the mass extermination of the Jews. In the beginning
of 10/1941, Brack had a conference with Eichmann from the Reich
Security Main Office of the SS and Wetzel of the Reich Ministry for the
Occupied Territories on the "solution of the Jewish
question". (No-997, Pros. Ex. 506.) Brack declared himself ready
to collaborate in the manufacture of the necessary gas chambers and
gassing apparatus for the extermination of all Jews who were unit to
work. Since the manufacture of this apparatus was easier to accomplish
in the East, Brack agreed to send some of his collaborators, and
especially his chemist, Kallmeyer, there for this purpose. Brack
proposed outright termination of all Jews who were unable to work.
Since Eichmann, whom Hitler had charged with the solution of the Jewish
question, was in agreement with Brack's proposals, no objection was
voiced against the extermination of those Jews who were unable to work
with the "Brack remedy". (No-365, Pros. Ex. 507.) Kallmeyer
was the technical expert on operation of the gas chambers in the
euthanasia station. (Tr. p. 7743.)
Nevertheless there are still problems
with the "stationary gas chamber" approach. There were no
stationary homicidal gas chambers in Riga, although Brack testified
under oath that there were gas chambers, and that Kallmeyer was in
charge of them. But since no one argues that such stationary gas
chambers for homicidal purposes ever existed in Riga, if one argues
that this letter is about them, that is tantamount to admitting that
this memo is about absolutely nothing at all..
In addition, shifting the
interpretation of this document to one of stationary gas chambers does
not help the conventional interpretation, since the weight of
corroborative evidence, that is, contemporary texts, continues to weigh
heavily on the side of a disinfection interpretation.
The core issue with this letter is
simple. The first paragraph makes references to
"Unterkuenfte" and
"Vergasungsapparate" (later referenced twice in the
same paragraph as "Apparate"). So far, two meanings
have been suggested: "gas vans" and "delousing
chambers". (The third intepretation, "stationary gas
chambers" is no longer advanced, and can be ignored.) It is my
continued judgment that "Vergasungsapparate" is a
reference to delousing chambers. My reasoning is as follows:
- The words "Vergasungsapparate" and particularly
"Apparate" are common in a disinfection context,
- Such "Apparate" in such
"Unterkuenfte" were common in the German Labor
Service,
- The first paragraph of this letter is specifically about
impressing Jews into the labor service in Riga and Minsk, and therefore
the Germans would have had to construct delousing huts for them,
and I consider it a reasonable inference that the discussion of
these "Vergasungsapparate" is in fact about the
construction of these huts, along with their associated delousing
chambers.
- The letter specifies that such "Apparate" are
in short supply in Berlin, and that they must be constructed on site in
Riga,
- A disinfection interpretation is supported in context by
testimony at the Tesch Weinbacher trial that indicate that Bruno Tesch
was in Riga in the late fall of 1941 specifically to give training to
disinfectors in the construction of such huts and their proper use,
- On the other hand, a "gas van" interpretation is
contradicted in context by the very eyewitness testimony quoted, which
specifies that the vans were driven from Berlin to Riga, and not
constructed on site,
and therefore I consider it a reasonable inference that the
reference to the "Apparate" that are to be constructed
on site is more likely a reference to delousing chambers than gas
vans.
- The letter suggests that Dr. Kallmeyer should travel to Riga to
ensure that the "Apparate" to be built are safe,
- The use of Zyklon B for delousing was notoriously unsafe, and
care had to be taken with its use, on the other hand, the carbon
monoxide from gas vans -- and a fortiori diesel vans -- would
scarcely be dangerous to someone outside of it,
Therefore my judgment is that the most
logical conclusion is that Dr. Kallmeyer was sent for to assist in the
construction of "Apparate" that would use a more
dangerous gas than carbon monoxide, and that would be the hydrocyanic
acid contained in Zyklon B.
- Adolf Eichmann is referenced specifically as in agreement with
"this process", i.e., the construction of these
"Apparate",
- this in the context of Eichmann's information that labor camps
for Jews are to be established in Riga and Minsk,
- the Jews who will thus be victimized will come from the west,
via Lodz (also in the west), to Riga and Minsk, in the east,
In other words, it seems clear from
the context that whatever is being constructed in Riga is being
constructed for the purpose of facilitating the entry of western Jews
into the German (forced) labor program in Riga, in the east (or Minsk,
which is even farther east.)
As a matter of fact, the document
suggests that what happened in Vilnius was this: a trainload of Jews
were sent to Vilnius, they were deemed unsuited for labor, and they
were shot. The letter is about arranging measures so that
- such shooting incidents no longer occur,
- only labor capable Jews are sent to Riga,
- labor capable Jews are entered into the labor service.
I assume -- and I might be wrong on
this -- that the reference to "beseitigen" the Jews
who cannot work is a reference to killing them, however, this draft
letter by itself does not even support the contention that the Jews
incapable of work would be sent to Riga at all! Which means that they
would be "beseitigen" somewhere else.
Confronted with a document that speaks
of "Vergasungsapparate" we seek a secure
interpretation that does not overly depend on the vagaries of court
testimony and which is based as strongly as possible within a wider
context of documentary literatures. I contend that for this document,
the meaning of "Vergasungsapparate" is clear, it is a
reference to building delousing huts for Jews who will be impressed
into the labor service, and that these huts will be equipped with
cyanide gas delousing chambers. Under the circumstances, I consider
this the simplest and least contorted explanation.
Conclusion
The critic who promised to expose my "errors", my
"outrageous lie", and my "intellectual dishonesty",
has done no such thing. What he has done is to offer his own
interpretation of "Vergasungsapparate" and
"Bracksche Hilfsmitteln" with the condition that
anyone who disagrees with his interpretation is committing
"errors", telling an "outrageous lie" and engaging
in "intellectual dishonesty".
This "touch me not" strategy
is wholly unsuited for scholarly debate and the author is not helped by
the fact that he displays what can only be described as a lack of
knowledge concerning German disinfection procedures, the language of
German disinfection, the activities of German disinfection in the
Baltics, the Nuremberg Trials, and other sundry matters. Morevoer, the
author demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about the purpose
of my main work.
The point of my essay is not to argue
that there were no gassings, or mass gassings, although I don't believe
these took place. The point was to investigate the evolution of the
gassing claims, coupled with an analysis of the quality of the evidence
used to support the claim. One of the two main conclusions of my essay
is that
There is no unambiguous material or
documentary basis for the gassing claims: what has been put forward as
indirect evidence of mass gassings turns out, in context, to
overwhelmingly pertain either to German disinfection procedures or
German civil air defense measures.
It would be obtuse to argue that a
disinfection interpretation of Vergasungsapparatecannot be
offered, and that simply means that this document is ambiguous.
Moreover, since the consensus of historians on this subject is that
there were no homicidal gas chambers in Riga, it follows that the
disinfection interpretation acquires preponderant weight. A homicidal
interpretation in the gassing sense can only be salvaged by insisting
that Vergasungsapparate means "gas chambers", an
interpretation with no documentary or material support, and by
insisting that Bracksche Hilfsmitteln is about these "gas
chambers", an interpretation that likewise has no support. Neither
of these interpretations is self-evident and both require question
begging to be fact, since they are not buttressed by any literatures or
documents external to this one. Moreover, in traversing these materials
we have had a glimpse of the prosecutorial perspicacity and the
unreliability of witnesses at the trial where this document was
introduced.
If the author of this attempted
"refutation" wishes to be more persuasive in the future, he
would be better advised to follow a strategy which is generous to the
other side in its assessments, which makes no claims to either
omniscience, clairvoyance, or absolute authority, which demonstrates an
effort to become educated in collateral matters, and which offers its
conclusions with some humility. I would recommend, in short, that he
read "The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes" with greater care
than he has demonstrated here.
Very Respectfully,
Samuel Crowell
Draft
The Reich Ministry
for the Occupied Eastern Territories
| |
Berlin, October 25, 1941 |
Expert AGR Dr. Wetzel
Secret!
Re: Solution of the Jewish Question
1. To the Reich Commissar for the East
Re: Your report of October 4, 1941 in respect to the Solution of
the Jewish Question
With reference to my letter of October 18, 1941, this is to inform
you that Oberdienstleiter Brack of the Führer Chancellery has
agreed to collaborate in the production of the required shelters and
gassing devices. At this time, the envisaged devices are not available
in sufficient quantity; they will first have to be manufactured. Since
in Brack's opinion, the manufacture of the devices in the Reich will
cause much greater difficulties than doing it on the spot, Brack
considers it most expedient to send his people to Riga, especially his
chemist Dr. Kallmeyer, who will effect all further steps there.
Oberdienstleiter Brack points out that the procedure in question is not
without danger, so that special protective measures are necessary. In
these circumstances, I request that you address yourself to
Oberdienstleiter Brack in the Führer Chancellery through your
Higher SS and Police Leader and request the dispatch of the chemist
Kallmeyer and other assistants. I should inform you that
Sturmbannführer Eichmann, the expert for the Jewish Question in
the RSHA is entirely in agreement with this process.
According
to information from Sturmbannführer Eichmann, camps for Jews are
to be set up in Riga and Minsk, to which Jews from the Old Reich
territory may also come. At this time, Jews are being evacuated out of
the Old Reich to Litzmannstadt (Lodz), and also other camps, to then
later be used for labour in the east insofar as they are capable of
work.
As things now are, there are no objections if the Jews who are not
capable of work, are eliminated with the Brackian remedy. In this way,
events such as those that, according to a report in front of me, took
place on the occasion of the shootings of the Jews in Vilna, and which,
considering that the shootings were carried out in public, can hardly be
excused, will no longer be possible. On the other hand, those capable
of work will be transported for labour in the east. It goes without
saying that the male and female Jews capable of work will be kept apart.
I request a report on your further measures.
1. Via technical means which would require lengthy explanation and
which might give away his identity in the process. (We have not
discussed his identity, but if he would like to know how I learned of
it, he is welcome to
contact me.)
2. He means "disinfestation" or "delousing,"
not "disinfection." Disinfection refers specifically to killing
bacteria and viruses. Poison gases kill only insects and other animal
vermin, have no effect on microbes, and are therefore incapable of
"disinfecting." This is a surprising mistake for him to make: he writes
e.g. "Zyklon B was widely used for disinfection" in the section quite
erroneously titled
"German
Disinfection Procedures."
3. The historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet refers to
this presumption of gas chambers' nonexistence as "the non-ontological
proof":
Formerly, God's existence was proven by the notion that existence
was contained in the very concept of God. Such was the famous
"ontological proof." It may be said that for the "revisionists," the
gas chambers did not exist because nonexistence was one of their
attributes. Such is the nonontological proof. For example, the word
Vergasung does indeed mean gassing when it appears in the
negative in a letter from the historian Martin Broszat to Die
Zeit (August 19, 1960): "Keine Vergasung in Dachau" ("no
gassing in Dachau"); but Vergasungskeller means "carburation
cellar" in a document on January 1943 cited by Georges Wellers
(Faurisson, in Vérité, pp. 104, 109).
The source is "A Paper Eichmann - Anatomy of a Lie" (1980), from
Assassins of Memory: Essays on the denial of the
Holocaust, 1992, p. 23. Available online at
http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/VidalNaquet92a/
(section 4, "On the Revisionist Method").
4. Perhaps "Vergasungsapparate" is
used occasionally in a delousing context but, if so, Crowell has yet to
present one single example. Thus, unless he is sandbagging by
withholding information, his claim that it is "common" is a deliberate
falsehood, i.e. a lie.
He claims to have ("even") found an example of
"Vergasungsapparatur" - but the word he claims,
"Kreislaufvergasungsapparaturen," neither is that word nor appears in
the
source
which he
cites
in his footnote 127. Furthermore, its root word "Apparatur" (equipment)
is not the same as "Apparat" (device) - perhaps Crowell did not notice
this. Other variations are offered, with "vergasen" and "Apparat"
appearing separately, but again, the separate words are so common that
this proves nothing.
Even if he did find examples of "Vergasungsapparate" which referred
to delousing devices, this would show only that his hypothesis is
plausible - not probable. The next step would be to
look at the surrounding context of the Wetzel-Lohse letter, as
described
above.
As we have already seen, even the exact words
"delousing van"
can refer to killing machines, so a linguistic study would only be the
first step down a dead-end road. And at present, he has yet to take
even that first step.
5. I am baffled that Crowell has deluded
himself into thinking that "Unterkünfte" (barracks, quarters,
lodging, accomodation) should be translated as "Labor Service huts." In
the first place, the Reichsarbeitsdienst, the State Labor Service, was
a civil service organization in which every young adult German was
required to participate. This would have nothing to do with the
Solution to the Jewish Question, the euthanasia program, Adolf
Eichmann, or an Adviser on Jewish Affairs.
His footnotes on this source (#134, #309) refer to one publication
about the Labor Service, by Josef Stangelmeyer, titled "Standardized,
Disassemblable Electrical Piping Connections for the Health-Technical
Installations of the Relocatable Barracks of the State Labor
Service."
Of course a paper on Labor Service barracks will repeatedly feature
the word "barracks" in the context of the Labor Service. But this has
no more to do with the Wetzel-Lohse letter than reports on the price of
tea in China.
In the second place, "Unterkünfte" simply means lodging; in a
military context, it means barracks, ordinary soldiers' barracks. Why
does he choose the words "huts" (and "shelters")? Perhaps because he
mistakenly translated it into English as "lodging," then back into
German as "Hütte," then into English again as "huts." Or perhaps
he realized that the context of barracks lent nothing to his
argument about delousing chambers, and that by picking other, awkward
words he could confuse the reader. Whatever the case, both his
translation and his reasoning are wrong. "Unterkünfte" appear in
other contexts as well, e.g. in the extermination camp.
back to the document...
|
