How do you deal with a Holocaust denier? This thread is not about discussing the Holocaust itself, just how deniers debate and how to counter them.
I agree with Michael Shermer and his chapter from "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time." and it is to ask, where did they go?
IME, which is a lot of debate going back over many years on various forums, the basic denier argument is "if not "A", therefore "B", where "A" is mass murder and "B" is mass survival. All they need to do is find reasons not to believe the evidence for mass murder and from that they can conclude it did not happen.
That argument has been summarised as "no holes, no Holocaust", meaning no holes in the roof of Krema II at Birkenau, so no gassing could have happened, or "no mass graves = no Holocaust" referring to the lack of mass graves full of corpses at the AR camps Sobibor, Chelmno, TII and Blezec.
Any attempt to introduce witnesses to the debate is rejected. The tactic is to concentrate on the witnesses who gave some ridiculous and clearly exaggerated testimony, if not lies. Other more reliable witnesses are picked over and anything they say which suggests mass pyres or digging graves with a dragline is rejected because the denier claims such is impossible to do. It is erroneously claimed all bodies from the gas chambers using CO, would have been bright cherry red due to the reaction with the blood, since no witness mentioned the colour, none were there.
Documents are rejected as forged, due to the typing, the use of language, official stamps missing or supposedly wrong. Or, despite rejecting that euphemisms were used, they claim euphemisms, such as liquidate actually means relocate.
Photos are mis-captioned, do not show gassings, show legitimate reprisal shootings or are countered with photos showing cheering Lithuanians welcoming the German soldiers liberating them from the Soviets.
The archaeological and forensic work at the camps is rejected as not properly done (should have been like the Nazis did at Katyn) or since no large, straight edged original graves have been clearly identified, there were no mass graves. The cremains have not been properly and independently tested to show they are human or Jewish. There has been no attempt to physically quantify the amount of cremains are at the camps. The archaeologists are all Jews or paid by them and they cannot be trusted.
Those debates go round and round and grind to a halt.
Where there has been success in showing deniers they are wrong is by pressing home the question, so what did happen to them? If millions did not die at the AR camps, where did they go?
The Nazis should have had ghettos and camps full of people supposedly resettled in the Russian east. Instead, reports were being sent back to Berlin that ghettos were being emptied and the Soviets liberated largely empty camps. At the end of the war, millions of people should have returned home to jobs and property. I like to concentrate on the Dutch Jews and ask, where are the c101,000 the Dutch government say went missing, were killed, failed to return after the war? The Dutch had very good initial registration records to show how many Jews were in the Netherlands. There are records of who was sent from Westerbork to the various camps, in particular, the c34,000 sent to Sobibor in 1943. Tens of thousands of well educated, well off, skilled Jews, speaking Dutch, appearing in other camps, ghettos or countries would be very distinctive.
Denier Thomas Kues had a go at tracing them. He wrote a three part study of supposed gassed Jews in eastern Europe. All he could find were rumours and second had stories about Dutch Jews (or their furniture) appearing in different countries in the occupied Soviet territories. He has disappeared since then.
Denier Eric Hunt claimed the camps were transit camps. He made a video, using Shoah interviews of survivors talking about selections at TII for some to go on and work at camps such as Majdanek. He has now admitted that was wrong and he cannot evidence mass survival.
Any discussion about what happened on denier forums is instantly trolled with excuses not to have to evidence mass transits and accusations of reversing the burden of proof. They hate it, which is why we should concentrate on that topic.
I agree with Michael Shermer and his chapter from "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time." and it is to ask, where did they go?
IME, which is a lot of debate going back over many years on various forums, the basic denier argument is "if not "A", therefore "B", where "A" is mass murder and "B" is mass survival. All they need to do is find reasons not to believe the evidence for mass murder and from that they can conclude it did not happen.
That argument has been summarised as "no holes, no Holocaust", meaning no holes in the roof of Krema II at Birkenau, so no gassing could have happened, or "no mass graves = no Holocaust" referring to the lack of mass graves full of corpses at the AR camps Sobibor, Chelmno, TII and Blezec.
Any attempt to introduce witnesses to the debate is rejected. The tactic is to concentrate on the witnesses who gave some ridiculous and clearly exaggerated testimony, if not lies. Other more reliable witnesses are picked over and anything they say which suggests mass pyres or digging graves with a dragline is rejected because the denier claims such is impossible to do. It is erroneously claimed all bodies from the gas chambers using CO, would have been bright cherry red due to the reaction with the blood, since no witness mentioned the colour, none were there.
Documents are rejected as forged, due to the typing, the use of language, official stamps missing or supposedly wrong. Or, despite rejecting that euphemisms were used, they claim euphemisms, such as liquidate actually means relocate.
Photos are mis-captioned, do not show gassings, show legitimate reprisal shootings or are countered with photos showing cheering Lithuanians welcoming the German soldiers liberating them from the Soviets.
The archaeological and forensic work at the camps is rejected as not properly done (should have been like the Nazis did at Katyn) or since no large, straight edged original graves have been clearly identified, there were no mass graves. The cremains have not been properly and independently tested to show they are human or Jewish. There has been no attempt to physically quantify the amount of cremains are at the camps. The archaeologists are all Jews or paid by them and they cannot be trusted.
Those debates go round and round and grind to a halt.
Where there has been success in showing deniers they are wrong is by pressing home the question, so what did happen to them? If millions did not die at the AR camps, where did they go?
The Nazis should have had ghettos and camps full of people supposedly resettled in the Russian east. Instead, reports were being sent back to Berlin that ghettos were being emptied and the Soviets liberated largely empty camps. At the end of the war, millions of people should have returned home to jobs and property. I like to concentrate on the Dutch Jews and ask, where are the c101,000 the Dutch government say went missing, were killed, failed to return after the war? The Dutch had very good initial registration records to show how many Jews were in the Netherlands. There are records of who was sent from Westerbork to the various camps, in particular, the c34,000 sent to Sobibor in 1943. Tens of thousands of well educated, well off, skilled Jews, speaking Dutch, appearing in other camps, ghettos or countries would be very distinctive.
Denier Thomas Kues had a go at tracing them. He wrote a three part study of supposed gassed Jews in eastern Europe. All he could find were rumours and second had stories about Dutch Jews (or their furniture) appearing in different countries in the occupied Soviet territories. He has disappeared since then.
Denier Eric Hunt claimed the camps were transit camps. He made a video, using Shoah interviews of survivors talking about selections at TII for some to go on and work at camps such as Majdanek. He has now admitted that was wrong and he cannot evidence mass survival.
Any discussion about what happened on denier forums is instantly trolled with excuses not to have to evidence mass transits and accusations of reversing the burden of proof. They hate it, which is why we should concentrate on that topic.
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2wNXfGk
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