CamRabbit

If there were photographs of the whole sequence of events, including photographs of piles of corpses in gas chambers, then there would be no such thing as revisionism. That would settle the matter immediately. The problem is that no such pictures exist. We have photographs of every aspect of World War II, including every aspect of the Holocaust, except for the gassing of the Jews. There are photographs of Jews getting off the train at Auschwitz, photographs of Jews in the camp, and photographs of bodies in mass graves, but there are no photographs of anyone being gassed.


The testimony of witnesses doesn't prove that there were gas chambers. There are three points that need to be made about witnesses.
a. The witnesses are not unanimous. Some witnesses didn't say anything about gas chambers.
For example, Jan Karski wrote a report in the fall of 1942 in which he stated that he visited the camp at Belzec to investigate rumors of extermination. He said the Jews were being killed by electrical shocks in a room with a metallic floor. In 1944, he published a book in which he said that the Jews were being loaded into wagons filled with quicklime and left to die outside the camp. Neither the article nor the book says anything about gas chambers. Now, of course, the official history of Belzec says nothing about electrical shocks or wagons filled with quicklime. We are supposed to believe that the Jews at Belzec were killed in gas chambers. But Jan Karski, who was there at the time (so he says), said nothing about gas chambers.
b. Witness testimony about gas chambers doesn't stand up under examination.
One of the witnesses who is quoted as an authoritative source is Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, the supposed author of Auschwitz, a Doctor's Eyewitness Account. There really was a Dr. Nyiszli. He was a Hungarian doctor. He was sent to Birkenau (not Auschwitz), where he worked in the pathology lab under the infamous Dr. Mengele. After the war, he testified at the Nuremburg trials. He died in 1949. The book was published in 1951. Throughout the book, the author says he was in Auschwitz. He says there were four crematoria at Auschwitz. In fact, there was one crematorium at Auschwitz, and four at Birkenau. Obviously anyone who was there would know that. Anyone who was there would know which camp was which. At the end (page 206), when they are evacuating in January of 1945, the author says We left, filled with the feverish sensation of liberation. Direction: the Birkenau KZ, two kilometers from the crematoriums. Dr. Nyiszli didn't leave Auschwitz and go in the direction of Birkenau. He was already in Birkenau. This is just the most glaring impossibility in a book full of impossibilities. This book was not written by Dr. Nyiszli. It couldn't have been written by anyone who was there. And yet this book is cited as one of the most authoritative witness statements.
If you read only one book about the Holocaust, that book should be Auschwitz, a Doctor's Eyewitness Account. Let them give you their best shot. Use your own judgment. Is this book an eyewitness account, or not?
c. Witnesses by themselves don't prove anything.
Suppose a hundred thousand witnesses claim that something happened. Does that mean it happened? There are probably a hundred thousand people who have "seen a UFO" at one time or another in the last fifty years. Does that mean there are flying saucers in the sky? There are hundreds of people who say they have not only seen UFOs, they have been in them. They have been abducted. They will tell you in vivid detail about their experience, and they have no obvious motive for lying. Does that mean it happened?
Go back and look again at the "gas chamber" - if someone says he saw people being gassed in that room, does that mean it happened?


Ah, the physical evidence. Well, If you could go to Auschwitz and find a room that was obviously a gas chamber, then there would be no such thing as revisionism. That would settle the matter once and for all. The problem is, when you go to Auschwitz and look at the room that is supposed to have been a gas chamber, you find a room that is obviously not a gas chamber. The basic fact in the whole subject is that the room that is supposed to have been a gas chamber isn't a gas chamber.
If I were teaching Psychology 101, I would use this as a paradigm case of beliefs governing perceptions. Some people look at those pictures and see a gas chamber. Others look at the same pictures and see a morgue. This is like that experiment where everybody in the room says the red pencil is longer, and the experimental subject, whose eyes tell him the green pencil is longer, is afraid to contradict the group.
My eyes tell me that the green pencil is longer, and I'm going to say so, even if it's illegal to say it (especially if it's illegal to say it): the very idea that people were gassed in that room or any such room is absurd on its face.

__________________