Talk:Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust/Archive 5

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1 ← Archive 3 Archive 4 Archive 5

Use of "claim"

This article makes frequent use of the word "claim" to refer to positions taken by Holocaust deniers. This undercuts the objectivity of the article. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch#Synonyms for said:

Said, stated, described, wrote, and according to are almost always neutral and accurate. Extra care is needed with more loaded terms. ...

To write that someone claimed or asserted something can call their statement's credibility into question, by emphasizing any potential contradiction or implying a disregard for evidence.

Is there any reason not to eliminate the use of "claim" here (except, of course, in direct quotations)? JamesMLane t c 19:22, 4 May 2013 (UTC)

"Report to the Fuhrer on Combating" what? = RS says "Gangs and Mobs"

The only RS that I've found so far for this report No. 51 is Peter Longerich's book The Unwritten Order: Hitler's Role in the Final Solution and that says "On 29 December 1942, Himmler presented Hitler with the 'Report to the Fuhrer on Combating Gangs and Mobs', no. 51 . The hand-written marginal notes by Hitler's adjutant show that the Fuhrer paid attention to its contents"[1] Dougweller (talk) 10:00, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Intro should be rewritten

The introductory section, other than the first sentence which is okay, should be junked and rewritten.

The lede is the place to summarize the article, lay out the main points. Currently, the lede lays out the main points of the article Holocaust Denial. This article is not the place to do that.

Yes, some context is required, but one cannot lay out what the Holocaust is in detail, and then what Negationists are, and then (finally!) what the criticism is, anymore than in articles about Quantum chromodynamics you would have to explain what hadrons, gluons, or the strong force is--you just link to them. If you don't have the background for the article, you read up, and come back. Same thing here; no need to explain what Deniers are, or include three bullet points about them, especially not in the lede, where we should be finding out the basis for the criticism of deniers.

Suggest we keep the first sentence, toss the rest of the lede, and replace with the basic ideas of denial criticism. The existing post-ToC section entitled "Criticism of methods used by Holocaust deniers" could supply much of the lede, with some additions. Mathglot (talk) 02:23, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Section headers and organization are all wrong

This article is weakly organized, and the content is skewed to explaining the topic being criticized (Holocaust Denial) rather than the criticism of it.

Headers such as "Hitler's Involvement" are all wrong--Hitler had no involvement in criticism of Holocaust Denial, so this section does not belong here, at least, not under that title. Many of the other section headers suffer the same problem--Use of gas chambers, Death toll, these could be headers on an article about Denial also.

It's not clear to me why there even needs to be an article with this title, and responses to Denial should simply be done on the Denial article. To all of the points outlined in this article, I'm sure the Deniers would have some sort of response--do we write another article, "Responses to Criticisms of Holocaust Denial" as well to cover those views? And then how about, "Counterpoints to Responses to Criticisms of Holocaust Denial", and so on ad infinitum--where does it all end?

If there is basically an argument about the history of the Holocaust with two sides, then it seems to me there needs to be either one, or at most two articles about it. Three is too many. Mathglot (talk) 02:46, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, sounds like someone else already thought of this: Criticism of criticism.... Mathglot (talk) 03:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Links to 'rebuttals' of 'Holocaust Denial' at the bottom of the article

Could Wikipedians involved in this article be anymore obvious in pushing a POV?

I'll agree with the above, some things Wikipedia should just stay out of. Solntsa90 (talk) 11:28, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Diesel exhaust for extermination, gas chambers

Fritz Berg, a well-known Holocaust denier mentions diesel exhaust 167 times on the index page of his website nazzigassings.com. Here's probably the best essay he wrote about it: "Nizkor Lies about the Toxicity of Diesel Exhaust". Fritz mentions Kurt Gerstein, who was trained as a mining engineer, should know diesel exhaust is not practical for asphyxiation -- diesel engines are used in mines because they emit inert amounts of toxic carbon monoxide. I searched the archives and found no mention of diesel exhaust. Raquel Baranow (talk) 21:06, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

The kind of engine used for the gassings has been a topic of discussion since long time. I have read several documents about this in the past but it is still not velar to me whether it was a diesel engine or a gasoline engine. If I remember well some sources indicated that they used an engine coming for a Russian T-34 tank. This is a diesel engine. But if this was the case, the comparison with the Pattle experiment raises issues that Fritz berg did not cover. For their experiment Pattle used a 568 cc, 6 BHP engine. As a matter of fact T-34 engines were 38.8 L (i.e. 38800 cc) and more 450 HP. I think there were much more output than what could be found with the Pattle experiment and probably more CO than needed to kill people in a few minutes. --Lebob (talk) 22:21, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
Gerstein would not have mistaken a Diesel for a gas engine. The Prattle experiment used a 10-cubic-meter (small) chamber, Treblinka gas chamber was allegedly 640-cubic-meters in volume. Berg's point is Diesel is impractical. He says (in the article I cited) producer gas, which the Nazis did use to run buses and trucks, is 18% -- 35% CO, whereas Diesel exhaust under load (a dynamometer) is 0.5% CO. (See also this essay by Berg where he mentions the T-34) Berg has a new book on the subject, which I just purchased. If we included a section on Diesel exhaust, I'm afraid Berg would win. Raquel Baranow (talk) 04:31, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
Where does the 640 cubic meters figure come from? In its section about the gas chambers the Treblinka article evokes gas chambers of 32 square meters, i.e. 8*4 meters. I hardly see how from 32 square meters per gas chamber (initially 3 then 10) on could reach 640 cubic meters. --Lebob (talk) 18:49, 17 September 2015 (UTC)
It came from the second reverence I quoted above, section 8.3, which didn't give a reference but see page 22 of this book, which quotes Soviet-Jewish author Wassili Grossmann: The new chambers were each seven by eight meters, or fifty-six square meters in area. The total surface area of these ten chambers amounted to five hundred-sixty square meters, and if one added to this the area of the three old chambers, which were put into service at the arrival of small parties, then Treblinka had at its disposal a total of usable lethal surface area of six hundred thirty-five square meters. (Makes you wonder why they didn't just build one big chamber and how this worked.) See also this:
One of the most memorable testimonies about Treblinka presented in Shoah, the nine-and-a-half-hour Holocaust film by French Jewish film maker Claude Lanzmann, is that of Abraham Bomba. He told how he and other Jewish barbers cut the hair of the naked Jews who were about to be gassed. They worked inside "the" gas chamber (he always spoke of one chamber), which was "around four by four meters" (about 12 feet by 12 feet). Bomba also reported that "140 or 150 women," with children, as well as 16 or 17 barbers, were inside this small room. In addition, there were benches where the women sat while their hair was cut, as well as two or more German guards. You may think Bomba is being misquoted but I have seen the movie and read the entire transcript, which was published as a book. The women's hair was cut, clothes taken away and showers taken to prevent typhus carried by lice. Raquel Baranow (talk) 22:15, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Ausschaltung

Also can be translated to Disconnect and Exclude — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.170.239.63 (talk) 07:28, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Quotes from Hitler

Denying that Hitler knew about the Holocaust, or the full scope of the Holocaust, isn't the same as actually denying it. These quotations implying that Hitler knew should, therefore, probably be deleted, since they don't relate to the specific charge of the deniers--which is that the Holocaust didn't happen, not that Hitler didn't know about it. The latter view is equally crackpot; but it's conceptually distinct. One could believe in gas chambers, the einsatzgruppen, etc while still believing Hitler was (or could have been) "in the dark."

Even if all the quotes aren't deleted, a couple should be. The supposed remark Hitler made to Hell is a particularly dubious piece of hearsay; and it was never recorded anywhere until after the war. While genocidal references to the Jews were a commonplace with Hitler, the gory description of hanging at the gallows doesn't sound like him; it sounds like an attempt to sell a book. Hitler's public speeches--esp. the 1939 "prophecy"--are damning enough; there's no reason to use dubious sources.

Note that, while virtually no historians doubt that Hitler knew about the Holocaust, most accept that no order from Hitler exists for the extermination of the Jews. This consensus flies in the face of a couple of the quotations on these page. Steeletrap (talk) 05:32, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Criticism of Holocaust denial. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 07:48, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Gordon McFee

Should he be considered a reliable enough source that his claim that revisionism works backward should just be taken as fact?

Even the stance that most revisionists work backward seems guesswork. Who is this person that they are an authority on other's motives or methodologies? If anything this is merely proof of such a criticism but not of its veracity. --Ranze (talk) 03:22, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Proposed split

@Steeletrap: brought up a good point at Talk:Criticism_of_Holocaust_denial/Archive_5#Quotes_from_Hitler which did not get a fair hearing due to an overactive archive robot. Extended its counter from 30 to 365 days to allow more discussion to build before archiving shuts it down before getting a response even when the space is not needed.

I proposed a split of this section initially into a new page for criticism of revisions rather than denials. Attribution of who knew about or orders various things does not target whether or not something happened, only its context.

I could say "yetis did the holocaust" for example, or "Bram Stoker ordered the holocaust". Such things would be revising thoughts about how an atrocity occurred but not saying it did not occur. That is why these rewrites counter criticisms should spin into their own article. What belongs here based on the name is just criticism of actual denials.

Think of this in respect to other crimes. You would not be a JFK assassination denialist if you thought someone else shot him other than Oswald. If you thought Kennedy faked his death and is living with alien robots on the other hand that would be denialism since it denies an assassination occurred. --Ranze (talk) 03:52, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I've moved the archiving back; a year of old discussion isn't helpful. It's not likely that we're going to insert weaseling rationalizations and dubious nomenclature, such as pretending that some forms of holocaust denial should be labelled "revisionism" instead. The entire field is called "holocaust denial"; minimization of Hitler's responsibility, for example, is called "denialism" by all except the deniers. --jpgordon::==( o ) 20:13, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
I've also restored the redirect at Holocaust revisionism to Holocaust denial. --jpgordon::==( o ) 20:17, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
I oppose merging "revisionism" into "denial." Holocaust revisionism is a legitimate enterprise; the functionalist-intentionalist debate was borne of revisionism. Holocaust denial, the claim that the Holocaust didn't happen or is exaggerated, is quite distinct from revisionism. Steeletrap (talk) 03:17, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Denying a person's accountability for an event is not denying the event. That would be Hitler-accountability-denial not Holocaust-denial. The use of revisionism to refer to negationism/denial is explained but that relation does not mean we should not discuss actual revisions to Holocaust history published by good scholars, such as the adjusting down of fatalities in a camp or the adjusting up of ghetto counts. --Ranze (talk) 19:59, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

This article has reliable sources that indicate that the phrase "Holocaust revisionism", as it is commonly used and understood, is nothing but a euphemism for Holocaust denial. Do you have any reliable sources that discuss this question and indicate the opposite? Jayjg (talk) 23:13, 15 May 2016 (UUTC

@Jayjg: the suffix ism is irrelevant, we need the idea not the exact phrase. "Revising the Holocaust": http://www.jstor.org/stable/3020959?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents clearly not denialist propaganda. Where is the reliable source alleging "nothing but" which trumps this one? Ranze (talk) 06:14, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Also the book this journal was responding to:

Daniel Goldhagen (1996). Hitler's Willing Executioners. p. 9. Explaining why the Holocaust occurred requires a radical revision of what has until now been written. This book is that revision.

An author refer to revising the holocaust, revising what is written about ie revisionism w/o silly nitpicking over suffixes, without it necessarily referring to denying the holocaust happened. Ranze (talk) 06:56, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

This is called "history". This is not called "Holocaust revisionism". People who refer to themselves as "Holocaust revisionists" are, on the whole, "Holocaust deniers". --jpgordon𝄢𝄆 𝄐𝄇 21:15, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Exactly, Jpgordon. Ranze, the issue here is not the suffix "ism". Rather, the issue is that despite the fact that multiple reliable sources both use and describe "Holocaust revisionism" as merely a euphemism for "Holocaust denial", you appear to be arguing that there is a specific subject "Holocaust revisionism" that is somehow both distinct from Holocaust denial and distinct from the usual kinds of historical revisionism that go on in any legitimate area of historical study. Regardless of the exact name, if such a topic actually existed, then where would be reliable secondary sources that named and described it as unique and different activity/subject. Where are these sources? Jayjg (talk) 21:18, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Criticism of Holocaust denial. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 12:52, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Criticism of Holocaust denial. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 14:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 8 external links on Criticism of Holocaust denial. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 19:45, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

The missing rubble at Birkenau

  • On 4 November 2002 I went to Auschwitz with a commemorative group, and by the crematorium remains at Birkenau I saw a heap of broken bricks and old mortar which the returning Polish population had thrown aside while searching for and removing fallen re-usable bricks. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 04:21, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

"Six million" section

It is not helpful, in an article named "criticism of Holocaust denial", to misrepresent the claims of the deniers. It is enough to present refutations of their actual claims, not to make up even more extreme claims just to make them look even worse. Thus, the article claims that the "6 million" figure is

"often minimized by such claims to a figure of only 1 million deaths, or only 300,000 deaths."

It isn't clear whose claims these are. Further below in the section, it is made clear the the 300k figure may be from the 1955 Die Tat magazine, which explicitly refers to German Jews. If this is the source of the 300k figure, it is a clear falsehood present this figure as a revisionist correction of the "6 million" grand total, let alone that such a claim has been made "often".

It seems that actual (non-"denialist") estimates of the Jewish death toll range between 5.1 and 6.5 million, with best estimates around 5.75M to 5.9M, while we can verify that people have been classified as deniers (or notorious revisionist) for preferring a number of 4M. So, it would seem the gap between "revisionism" and "best estimates", while real, is narrower than this article suggests and may in some cases even be accounted for in differences of definition of "Holocaust" (total number of Jewish deaths during WW2 vs. number of Jewish deaths due to being targeted specifically for being Jewish).

What I am saying is that the article needs to make a better effort in defining "revisionism" and addressing specific claims by revisionists. I have no doubt that crazy conspiracy loons abound, as everywhere, but it isn't helpful to simply say "often, claims such as" and cherry-pick the worst claim ever made. I am interested in in, which is the highest number of Jewish deaths somebody was willing to accept while still being classed as "revisionist". Apparently, the number is larger or equal than 4M. At the same time, Gerald Reitlinger's 1953 estimate of 4.2M to 4.5M is presented as outdated but reasonable in the main article, so it would seem the gap between revisionism and non-revisionism is pretty narrow. --dab (𒁳) 08:29, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Cole is certainly not the best example of what a denier is. Most of the deniers claim 1) that the nazi extermination camps did not exist, 29 that not Jew has been gazed, 3) that the number of Jews killed during WW II under nazi rule does not exceed 300,000 and 4) that most of them died because of diseases like typhus. This is, for instance, the case of French denier Robert Faurisson, but he is far from alone to do so. --Lebob (talk) 18:04, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Criticism of Holocaust denial. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 01:17, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

"War against the Jews?"

In the section about HItler's involvement we see:

In Mein Kampf, Hitler argued that a war against Jews would have saved Germany from losing World War I:[13]

If at the beginning of the war and during the war twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.[14]

Did Hitler use the term "war" or did he just mention gassing. If this is just editorializing, then I suggest that the sentence be revised to something like:

"In Mein Kampf, Hitler argued that killing some large number of Jews..." and omitting the word "war."--209.37.99.86 (talk) 23:29, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

"Denial as antisemitism"

This paragraph leaves a lot to be desired and reads like an opinion piece. Please add meaningful data from a variety of funding sources and religious backgrounds. 121.45.171.107 (talk) 04:53, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Removal of sourced content

  • Buidhe can you explain why are you deleted this sourced content, and who are the "extreme internationalists" that you are talking about? Rupert Loup (talk) 23:56, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
    Rupert loup, What I removed is a collection of weak sources which are being used to promote the fringe view that Hitler was planning genocide before 1939. The web sources are not very good, Dawidowicz book is very much out of date, and the more recent book is a primary source collection, which does not establish due weight, and it's primary sources on the Weimar Republic which raise concerns about WP:OR if they're being used here ("you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented"). We need more recent scholarly sources on this article that are directly discussing Holocaust denial to avoid synthesis, undue weight, and or. buidhe 00:01, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
    Bottom line: if it's a significant and noteworthy criticism of Holocaust denial that's of WP:DUE weight to include, you should be able to cite a scholar in the last thirty years who has specifically mentioned the point as a criticism of Holocaust denial. Otherwise, I am afraid that you end up with OR and small minority viewpoints made to seem more prominent than they are. buidhe 00:14, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 3 June 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (non-admin closure) -- Mdaniels5757 (talk) 01:44, 10 June 2020 (UTC)


Criticism of Holocaust denial → Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust – See below buidhe 01:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

  • If you look at many of the sources cited in the article, they aren't discussing Holocaust denial directly but rather evidence that the Holocaust actually occurred. Furthermore, many of the most prominent Holocaust historians don't say much about denial, but they do write about the evidence for the Holocaust, often in context of specific pieces of evidence—witness testimonies, reports, documentation, photographs, and so forth.
  • The article has a serious OR problem, in terms of interpretation of primary sources and secondary sources that may be cited without them actually mentioning Holocaust denial or criticism of it. Changing the article title to "Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust" dramatically reduces OR because we no longer have to locate sources talking about denial specifically but evidence and documentation. We will be able to reduce the use of weaker sources like Nizkor and replace with stronger, scholarly sources that are directly talking about evidence. With the new scope, we still discuss how evidence refutes denier arguments and the section "Denial as antisemitism" can be merged back into Holocaust denial. For comparison, there is no Criticism of Armenian Genocide denial but there is Witnesses and testimonies of the Armenian Genocide. buidhe 01:39, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Support. I think this change makes sense. Rreagan007 (talk) 04:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Support plus suggestion: It is better than the current name, but "evidence" may not be needed, and "of" may be better than "for". "Documentation of the Holocaust" is shorter and already implies evidence, doesn't it? "Evidence" feels to me a bit like "we don't really know if it happened, but for what it's worth, here is some evidence that suggests that it may have". But that is not how it is: it is documented fact, and the article name should reflect that. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:15, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
    Hob Gadling, "Documentation of the Holocaust" sounds like physical documentation and might not include witness testimonies. Furthermore, "evidence" allows the inclusion of indirect evidence, such as the dramatic and otherwise unexplained reduction of the Jewish population of Europe by 5–6 million—considered one of the most important pieces of evidence by scholars. But it's debateable whether that evidence is included in "Documentation of the Holocaust". buidhe 15:33, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
    Suggestion refuted. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:56, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Support as per article contents and explanations above ~ Amkgp ✉ 05:01, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

New lead

Evidence collected by the prosecution for the Nuremberg trials

The Holocaust—the murder of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945—is the most well-documented genocide in history. Although there is no single document which lists all Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, there is conclusive evidence that about six million were killed.[1] There is also conclusive evidence that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau,[2][3] the Operation Reinhard extermination camps,[4][5] and in gas vans, and that there was a systematic plan by the Nazi leadership to murder them.[4]

Evidence for the Holocaust comes in four main varieties:[4]

  • Contemporary documents, including a wide variety of "letters, memos, blueprints, orders, bills, speeches,"[6] Holocaust train schedules,[4] statistical summaries generated by the SS[1] and photographs, including official photographs, clandestine photographs by survivors, aerial photographs, and film footage of the liberation of the camps.[6][7] More than 3,000 tons of records were collected for the Nuremberg trials.[8]
  • Later testimony from tens of thousands of eyewitnesses, such as survivors including Sonderkommandos who directly witnessed the extermination process, perpetrators such as Nazi leaders, SS guards and commandants, and local townspeople.[6][9] Virtually none of the perpetrators put on trial denied the reality of the systematic murder.[10]
  • Material evidence in the form of concentration camps and extermination camps, which still exist with various amounts of the original structure preserved,[6][11] and thousands of mass graves containing the corpses of Holocaust victims.[12][13]
  • Circumstantial evidence: during World War II the population of Jews in German-occupied Europe was reduced by about six million.[6][14] Hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported to the Operation Reinhard camps and were never seen or heard from again.[4]

The perpetrators attempted to avoid creating explicit evidence and tried to destroy the documentary and material evidence of their crimes before the German defeat.[4][8] Nevertheless, much of the evidence was preserved and collected by Allied investigators during and after the war. Collectively, the evidence refutes the arguments of Holocaust deniers that the Holocaust did not occur as described in historical scholarship.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b "Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  2. ^ "Author tells of 'massive' proof for gas chambers". the Guardian. 26 January 2000. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  3. ^ van Pelt 2016, p. 89.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Browning, Christopher. "Browning: Evidence for the Implementation of the Final Solution". Holocaust Denial on Trial. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  5. ^ "Operation Reinhard Evidence: Camps Not Hearsay". Holocaust Denial on Trial. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
  6. ^ a b c d e Shermer & Grobman 2002, p. 33.
  7. ^ Milton, Sybil (1999). "Photography as evidence of the Holocaust". History of Photography. 23 (4): 303–312. doi:10.1080/03087298.1999.10443338.
  8. ^ a b c "Combating Holocaust Denial: Evidence of the Holocaust presented at Nuremberg". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  9. ^ "Visual History Archive: Testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses". Stanford Libraries. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  10. ^ Douglas, Lawrence (2011). "From Trying the Perpetrator to Trying the Denier and Back Again". In Hennebel, Ludovic; Hochmann, Thomas (eds.). Genocide Denials and the Law. Oxford University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-19-987639-6.
  11. ^ van Pelt, Robert Jan (2016). The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-02884-6.
  12. ^ "Einsatzgruppen: Mass Graves Exist". Holocaust Denial on Trial. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  13. ^ Desbois, Patrick (2018). In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-62872-859-0.
  14. ^ Wistrich, Robert (2003). Terms of Survival: The Jewish World Since 1945. Routledge. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-134-85579-7.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

International Committee of the Red Cross section removal

@buidhe Wouldn't the ICRC report be auxiliary evidence for the Holocaust and therefore be a part of this article? - || RuleTheWiki || (talk) 09:40, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

RuleTheWiki, Possibly, but we would need a secondary source stating that. AFAIK the Red Cross sources are used more as sources on the Red Cross, and also by Holocaust deniers, than they are by historians who are looking to find actual facts about the events themselves. (The ICRC reports on Nazi concentration camps are not very helpful evidence because they were staged heavily, see Theresienstadt and the Red Cross). buidhe 10:06, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Only Jewish victims?

So, the holocaust was the intentional killing (murder) of six million Jews? No gentiles were murdered? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:7080:C140:44:69FA:FDEB:5F44:64BF (talk) 07:40, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

This has been discussed in the past at Talk:The Holocaust. Many sources define "The Holocaust" as the organized murder of Jews by Nazi Germany. Yes it's true the German war machine also murdered non-Jews systematically during World War II (Soviet POWs, gypsies, to name a few), but the term "Holocaust" often refers to the state-sponsored murdering of Jews specifically. This is at least how the Wikipedia page The Holocaust approaches it, so any discussion to change this should start at Talk:The Holocaust, not here. TarkusABtalk/contrib 12:43, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
I think a brief explanation in the lead might help.Slatersteven (talk) 12:47, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Unsure about reference - removal is in order

"Historians, including Ian Kershaw, Raul Hilberg, and Martin Broszat, indicate that no document exists showing that Hitler ordered the Holocaust. However, other evidence makes clear that Hitler knew about and ordered the genocide. Statements from Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler also indicate that Hitler orchestrated the Holocaust and statements from Hitler himself reveal his genocidal intentions toward Jewry.[16]"

I click the source, and it mentions that the reason for this is because the Nazis valued secrecy when it came to murdering Jews. However, in the Reichstag speech, given none other than by Hitler himself, he states: "Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe. "

I think this alone proves that there was nothing "secretive" about it. It was a major cornerstone for his campaign. So I'll be removing the last sentence from the original quote unless I am corrected by someone. 76.179.51.51 (talk) 00:01, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Please read wp:or, it does not matter what you think. What matters is what RS say.Slatersteven (talk) 10:20, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
See Hitler's prophecy for more information regarding how both Germans and international observers may have interpreted Hitler's January 1939 speech contemporaneously.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 13:43, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

History

The evidence of how the nazi dealt with the holocaust 41.150.211.219 (talk) 06:11, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, your point is? Slatersteven (talk) 09:34, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Evidence_and_documentation_for_the_Holocaust/Archive_5&oldid=1211449172"