SKEPTICMAG@aol.com wrote:

This letter I sent to Germar is being passed around all over the net amongst you all. Interesting.

Well, thanks for your reply in the name of all of us (whoever that may be...), but why do you find interest in what you write an interesting phenomenon in itself?

I can see that, yes. Obviously if, as you put it, you completely trusted eyewitness accounts, you wouldn't be much of a skeptic, would you?...

Anyway, what I meant to ask you was why did you find the very few gas chamber testimonies more convincing than other kinds of testimony in the wake of the war crimes trials. I assume you have noticed that most of it was from a very few people who either got away with very minor sentences and disappeared from public view as soon as they were set free, or were used to testify in further trials when the confessions were not forthcoming...

But given the non-existent evidence for any gas chambers at the war crimes trials, as opposed to testimony and self-incriminating confession (even if you believe it was all true, I hope you'll recognize that those trials were orchestrated to a very unusual degree), and -- to put it very, very mildly -- the low level of witness cross-examination by the defense at the Nuremberg IMT, the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial etc, not aggressively conducted at all (you understand why that was so, I trust), why do you promote the gas chambers into a radically different fetish from, say, the human soap-making (see Morgen's testimony, for instance, as well as the actual physical evidence introduced by the Soviets)?

Certainly no more lame than believing in, say, the self-incriminating testimony in the Moscow trials. How do we know they were not telling the truth?

Okay. But let me suggest the following to you: I think trying to take everything in a single stride is a nice propaganda device when one is not interested in the truth, but debating the fine points is something else. So, instead of simply asking you why would the Germans be self-incriminating themselves (people generally say that physical evidence for the secret extermination was not needed because the culprits confessed everything under no compulsion and in the absence of evidence, quite an extraordinary view, if you ask me!), I'll simply suggest that you choose one of your witnesses before we proceed with the others. I believe this might be an informative exercise for both of us.

If no gassings, my explanation for these accounts is exactly the same as yours: some of them are outright lies, some are half-truths and some are the distorted result of the Moscow school of politically expedient jurisprudence, meaning the trial rules a' la Rudenko (Vishinsky's trusted right arm, as you may have heard).

Your question is tantamount to ask "why do people lie?" or "why are people run over by buses?". The only possible reply is "for about one million different reasons, each one peculiar to each case, but as a general rule of thumb, usually having something to do either with saving one's own life or one's future comfort or simply relieving one's immediate discomfort (Germans), or taking vengeance or indulging in what we might call the cozy appeal of general mass hysteria (Jews etc)".

People generally love that sort of thing, and savage wars are a fertile ground for fantastic tales about the superhuman evil of the opposite side, you know. It's not really new. All the losing side can do is go along and pray for mercy.

A sad state of affairs.

Well, as I said, I'll be glad to give you some pieces of data that may be new to you, concerning your favorite gas chamber "eyewitnesses" if you are so kind as to select them one by one to avoid what I usually call the "convergence of muddled thinking". I don't think two people examining several different things all at once is conductive to any deep understanding of anything at all.

Your move then. I have nothing to lose but my chains...
;)

ASMarques