Just curious: what do you make of the following?

Unless you drastically improve the quality of your responses this is likely the last time I will waste so much time on you. You did not address on point I raised. You in fact responded with more of the same testimony and failed to provide the least bit of physical evidence. I really do have better things to do than to play a silly game with a true believer.

If you are really a skeptic, act like one.

P.S. I'm not Jewish and have no relatives that are.

Why would that matter? When I was doing my growing up there were 12 to 14 million victims of which only 6 were Jewish. That emphasis has changed does not bother me in the least.

In addition to photographic evidence,

Again that sounds like a person claiming to be an alien abductee showing a picture of an unidentified light in the sky as evidence of his abduction. Or perhaps an otherwise unremarkable piece of metal taken from his body as evidence.

There are no pictures of "gas chambers." There are pictures of buildings captioned gas chambers. I am certain you have seen pictures of lights in the sky captioned "of extraterrestrial origin." Certainly a skeptic looks at the picture and ignores the caption.we have the confessions of guards such as SS-Unterscharführer (Sergeant) Pery Broad, captured on May 6, 1945, by the British in their zone of occupation in Germany.

I have searched here

Nuremberg IMT transcripts at the Avalon Project of Yale Law School

and can find no mention of him at Nuremberg.

Without going into what Broad said, I am certain you know that most witches confessed without the least bit of torture. I am certain you know that at times there were epidemics of confessions to practicing witchcraft.

What conceivable weight would a skeptic give to either the confession of Nazis or witches?

Broad began work at Auschwitz in 1942 in the 'Political Section,' and stayed there until the liberation of the camp in January, 1945. After his capture, he worked as an interpreter for the British and, in the process, wrote a memoir that was passed on to the British Intelligence Service in July, 1945. That December, he declared under oath that what he wrote was true. On September 29, 1947, the document was translated into English and presented at the Nuremberg Trials as evidence of the use of gas chambers as mechanisms of mass murder. Later that year Broad was released. In April, 1959, Broad was called to testify at a trial of captured Auschwitz SS members, and acknowledged the authorship of the memoir, confirmed its validity, and retracted nothing.

The reason for this background to Broad's memoir is that deniers dismiss damning Nazi confessions as being coerced, or made up for bizarre psychological reasons (while simultaneously accepting those that support their position).

Absent physical evidence of gas chambers we dismiss all confessions and memoirs just as in absence of physical evidence of witchcraft we dismiss all confessions to its practice whether voluntary or coerced.

Broad was never tortured, and he had absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by confessing. When given the opportunity to recant, which he certainly could have done in the later trial, he did not.

As you know, witches did not recant either. So how do you tell the difference between the two other than you do not believe in witchcraft but do believe in gas chambers? Yet there is no physical evidence of either.

And a true skeptic demands physical evidence as the sine qua non of reality. It is the basis of all scientific progress for some five centuries now. Testimony only, stories only is exactly what scientists and skeptics and the law rejects out of hand unless it is to physical evidence.

I am again quite surprised you do not know that. It is quite unfathomable. Your magazine should be either promoting unicorns and faeries and gas chambers or rejecting all three and either promoting or rejecting upon the same grounds.

Instead, he described in detail the gassing procedure, including the use of Zyklon-B, the early gassing experiments in Block 11 of Auschwitz, the temporary chambers set up at the two abandoned farms at Birkenau (Auschwitz II), which he correctly called by their jargon name of 'Bunkers I and II.' He also recalled the construction of Crematoria II, III, IV, and V at Birkenau, accurately depicting (by comparison with blueprints) the design of the undressing room, gas chamber, and each crematorium.

You have just demonstrated what little you know of the subject is horribly confused to the point of being useless. Nothing is called bunkers. There are morgues (Leichenkellar) I and II at Krema II and III but not undressing rooms. There are no blueprints of these LK. At best there is a architectural concept drawing of LK I and only ONE such drawing not plural blueprintS. There are undressing rooms associated with K IV and V but no LKs.

There is no physical evidence of any "extermination" in either of the LKs or the undressing rooms.

You have much to learn on this subject before you are qualified to speak on it.

He then described the actual process of gassing in gruesome detail:

The disinfectors are at work?with an iron rod and hammer they open a couple of harmless looking tin boxes,

It came in cans, not boxes. It opened with a standard can opener. Already his description is rather ridiculous.

the directions read Cyclon [sic] Vermin Destroyer, Warning, Poisonous. The boxes are filled with small pellets which look like blue peas. As soon as the box is opened the contents are shak= en out through an aperture in the roof.

There are no apertures or openings or induction ports or introduction ports on any roof. So obviously he is telling a story. Whatever he is saying is untrue. And with that there is no need to go into the rest as it is already false to known fact, known physical evidence.

Deniers point out that Broad's four minutes for the total process is at= odds with the statements of others,

A rational person with a knowledge of the pathology of cyanide points out that it is at odds with physical reality and therefore is impossible. And therefore he is lying. There are no miracles. There is only physical reality.

People who claim to witness what is physically impossible are what we call liars. Any skeptic knows that.

such as the commandant Höss, who said it was more like twenty minutes. Because of these minor discrepancies, deniers dismiss the account entirely.

A rational person who claims to be a skeptic refuses to accept testimony unless it is to physical evidence, testimony to the evidence. While you may publish a magazine implying you are a skeptic you clearly are not a skeptic nor do you have a skeptical bone in your body. I am really quite disappointed in this response.

You have failed to address even one issue I raised in my first email to you. Rather you choose to indulge in reiteration of the nonsense of testimony instead of evidence which I pointed out in my first post.

A dozen different accounts give a dozen different figures for time of death by gassing, so deniers figure that = no one was gassed at all. Does this make sense? No.

Lets see, a dozen different people claim a dozen different medical experiments the aliens conducted on them. Does it make sense to reject their stories because they are all different?

To your mind, of course not. Just because the experiments are different, the details are all different, you would accept alien abduction testimony as you accept gas chamber testimony.

A true skeptic rejects both.

Rather I draw your attention to what you must know if you are truly knowledgeable in matters skeptical. Over centuries and from all over Europe, witches told stories much more consistent than are told about gas chambers. All over the world alien abductees have told much more consistent stories since the Betty and Barney Hill than are told about gas chambers.

If inconsistency is an issue then consistency must count for more than ignoring inconsistency.

Again, you are clearly a true believer rather than a skeptic.

In The gassing process would take different lengths of time

In no case can it occur in four minutes. He lied. QED.

If a witness is shown to lie in any material aspect of his testimony, the jury may choose to disregard his testimony in its entirety. In a matter of such an extraordinary nature extraordinary extraordinary physical evidence is required. No amount of testimony to gas chambers or witches or unicorns can substitute for physical evidence.

You truly are not a skeptic. You are simply one who promotes the social belief norms of a small community.

Deniers make a similar argument about the confession of SS-Obersturmbannf=FChrer Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz from May 20, 1940, to November 11, 1943. Höss made his statement on April 5, 1946, completely unaware of Pery Broad's memoir (and vice versa).

Höss also confessed to the impossible.

From http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/04-15-46.htm#hoess note 15th not 5th.

He also testified to hundreds of thousands not millions. He also says he was not permitted to keep exact records. The death books and the amount of coal delivered to the Kremas both converge upon 130,000 total deaths at Auschwitz. DR. KAUFFMANN: And during that time, hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent to their death there. Is that correct?

HOESS: Yes.

And he did not testify to first hand knowledge even though he was running the show.

DR. KAUFFMANN: Is it furthermore true that Eichmann stated to you that in Auschwitz a total sum of more than 2 million Jews had been destroyed?

HOESS: Yes.

For your further amusement you might also search the website on Eichmann and find his title was Sonderkommando Eichmann.

It is also up to you to demonstrate the statements were uncontaminated. The interrogators were obviously sources of contamination as were the folks who guided witches in their voluntary confessions.

Further, the Nuremberg Tribunal, when trying Hoess,

Rudolf Hoess of Auschwitz was not tried at Nuremberg. He was a witness for the prosecution at Nuremberg. Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy who flew to England was tried at Nuremberg. The Hoess in question here was tried later in Poland.

Again, you know so little of the subject under discussion it is difficult to hold a rational discussion with you. The temptation is strong to tell you to go learn what you are talking about before you respond. OTOH, I feel an obligation to direct your studies into what you need to learn.

However, my background is as a manager not a teacher. Your type I would permit to buy me lunch and after they picked up the tab politely tell them to get lost.

was also unaware of the Broad document. This is important because even if deniers completely discount the Hoess testimony, which they do, they still have the problem of explaining why the two accounts coincide so well.

First they do not coincide in any detail of interest. Second it is still only testimony. Third it is your unsupported assumption it is uncontaminated. Fourth it is quite clear you have never delved into the Nuremberg transcripts no matter how unreliable they are.

Further, after Hoess was found guilty and sentenced to death, he wrote a 250-page autobiographical manuscript that corroborates both his previous testimony and Broad's statement. On the gassing procedure, for example, compare Hoess?s account with Broad's above:

As any true skeptic knows, the 'manuscript' was produced by the communist government of Poland in 1957 and had so little credibility that only Bantam paperback in the US picked it up.

I hate to be the last to break it to a hardened skeptic such as yourself but communists are always producing confessions from their arrestees. What would be remarkable would be the lack of a confession.

Then, very quickly, the door was hermetically sealed,

You obviously believe in magic as there are no doors that could be "hermetically" sealed in evidence. In this case, magically and hermetically are interchangeable. It takes but a little web searching to find pictures of doors on real US gas chambers and discover they look like hatches on naval warships and submarines.

It takes about the same amount of web search time to go to the USHMM site, search on gas chambers, and find a standard bomb shelter door touted as a gas chamber door. Again you demonstrate you know so little about the subject that you have not earned the right to have an opinion.

and a can of gas was immediately thrown onto the floor, through an opening connected to an air duct in the ceiling of the gas chamber,

No such ducts exist nor is there evidence of their prior existence, what happened to pouring in the pea-sized blue pellets? Therefore it is, as we say in the vernacular, bullshit.

Broad and Hoess never saw each other before Hoess?s capture on March 11, 1946, (10 months after Broad).

How do you know? BTW: Hoess surrendered.

But even if one wanted to fantasize a secret meeting between the two before Broad was captured, why would they fabricate a story that would surely convict them?

From that I would posit you a middle question. Why would they both do a Perry Mason and testify to what would certainly result in their executions? Why indeed would they behave as the guilty do in Perry Mason novels?

Finally, compare these two testimonies with that of the camp physician, Dr. Johann Paul Kremer (in Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 1994, 162):

September 2, 1942. Was present for first time at a special action at 3 a.m. By comparison Dante?s Inferno seems almost a comedy. Auschwitz is justly called an extermination camp!

September 5, 1942. At noon was present at a special action in the women's camp-the most horrible of all horrors. Hschf. Thilo, military surgeon, was right when he said to me today that we are located here in the anus mundi [anus of the world].

Anus Mundi is a reference to Dante's Inferno. That is where it comes from. But no gas chambers there.

Deniers claim that Kremer says ?special action,? not gassing, but at the trial of the Auschwitz camp garrison in Krakow in December, 1947, Kremer clarified exactly what he meant by ?special action? (162):

Excuse me. A confession at a communist trial? Was this open to the public? Do we have an actual transcript?

Dear Skeptic, Cardinal Minzenty confessed. He was guilty. End of story.

You do not have a skeptical bone in your body.

By September 2, 1942, at 3 a.m. I had already been assigned to take part in the action of gassing people. These mass murders took place in small cottages situated outside the Birkenau camp in a wood.

Dear Skeptic, Wood!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????

For god's sake where did hermetic go?

Where are these small cottages today?

Where is the physical evidence?

The cottages were called 'bunkers' in the SS-men's slang. All SS physicians on duty in the camp took turns to participate in the gassings, which were called Sonderaktion [special action]. My part as physician at the gassing consisted in remaining in readiness near the bunker. I was brought there by car. I sat in front with the driver and an SS hospital orderly sat in the back of the car with oxygen apparatus to revive SS-men, employed in the gassing, in case any of them should succumb to the poisonous fumes. When the transport with people who were destined to be gassed arrived at the railway ramp, the SS officers selected from among the new arrivals persons fit to work, while the rest-old people, all children, women with children in their arms and other persons not deemed fit to work-were loaded onto lorries and driven to the gas chambers.

If that were true, and if we pick 13 as being too young to work then we have an interesting problem. Today there are over 400,000 holocaust survivors by official proclamation of Jewish only claimants in the world. This comes from the reparations claims in the on-going negotiations with the German government. Today we have an average lifespan of 75 years.

That means 75/5 * 400,000 there were 6 million holocaust survivors in 1945. An interesting number that does in fact coincide with some claims. Its all in the demographics. I can't change it nor am I interested in educating you in demographics. Run the numbers yourself.

I would hope you understand you can not have 6 million dead, 6 million survivors and only 3.5 million Jews ever under Nazi influence all at the same time.

To a REAL skeptic, math rules! just as science rules! And stories that conflict with either are what we call, again crudely, bullshit.

The convergence of accounts between Broad, Hoess, and Kremer is additional proof that the Nazis used gas chambers and crematoria for mass extermination.

Witches over centuries and thousands of miles are more consistent. Abductees are much more consistent. People who report seeing ghosts over thousands of years from all over the world are much more consistent. What do you want for nothing?

Again, you are obviously not a skeptic. You want to believe. That is your problem, not mine.

And these are only the three most famous. There are many others, such as the following extract from a sworn statement by Stefan Kirsz taken in Belzec on October 15, 1945 (where carbon monoxide was used instead of Zyklon-B).

If you knew the least thing about the subject you would know the claim is the dead were buried but that no one, including the people who claimed to have witnessed it, were unable to find the mass graves at Belzec.

As to monoxide, I would expect everyone to know about monoxide poisoning from the newspapers. I would expect a true skeptic to compare what they know about it to the "eyewitness" reports and to reject those reports out of hand. OR to claim the newspapers are lying. As the two are mutually exclusive, there is no middle ground.

Again, you demonstrate no ability to deal with reality on this subject.

In 1942, Kirsz was a twenty-nine-year-old Belzec villager employed by the Polish State Railways as an assistant locomotive driver on the line between Rawa Ruska and Belzec. In other words, Kirsz was a witness with no particular ax to grind as he describes what he saw (Zentrale Stelle, 1148):

In other words you have no idea if he ever existed or said this or in what forum. That is the reason physical evidence is an absolute requirement.

The transports which I drove from Rawa Ruska to Belzec were divided into three parts in Belzec whereby each part (20 wagons) was rolled onto a siding on the area of the camp. As soon as the wagons came to a stop on the siding on the area of the camp they were emptied of Jews. Within 3-5 minutes the 20 wagons were completely emptied of people and luggage.

The operators of the Denver airport should be crawling all over the statement to find out how that was done.

You are very gullible.

I saw that besides the living people, corpses were also taken out. These people were ordered to place their luggage on one side and to completely undress themselves. Their clothes were laid on one side and their shoes on the other and then they went, undressed, one after the other, into a barrack which stood near the siding, from where they were pushed into the gas chambers [von wo sie in die Gaskammer geschoben wurden]. I was able to see this because I entered the camp area and pretended that I had to shovel coal nearer to the furnace door. The Germans allowed no one to see the camp area. Whenever I was in a locomotive near the extermination camp I tried to see something more, but I did not hear the screams of the Jews driven in.

The power of this eyewitness account speaks for itself,

As does Hamlet and King Lear and Macbeth but that does not mean there is physical evidence for the stories. And EVERY REAL skeptic insists upon physical evidence.

Obviously you are not one.

as does this statement of Hans Stark, registrar of new arrivals at Auschwitz (Klee, et al., 1988, 254-255):

As early as autumn 1941 gassings were carried out in a room in the small crematorium which had been prepared for this purpose. The room held about 200-250 people, had a higher-than-average ceiling, no windows and only a specially insulated door, with bolts like those of an airtight door. There were no pipes or the like which would lead the prisoners to believe that it was perhaps a shower room. In the ceiling there were two openings of about 35 cm in diameter at some distance from each other. The room had a flat roof which allowed daylight in through the openings. It was through these openings that Zyklon-B in granular form would be poured?.

Unfortunately there are no signs of the essentials of that description on the building shown to tourists at Auschwitz. Therefore, again, bullshit!

At another, later gassing-also in autumn 1941-Grabner ordered me to pour Zyklon-B into the opening because only one medical orderly had shown up. During a gassing Zyklon-B had to be poured through both openings of the gas chamber room at the same time.

But as you should know there are no hole, no openings, therefore again, Bullshit!

This gassing was also a transport of 200-250 Jews, once again men, women and children.

As you so love the Hoess document from communist Poland, he does not mention Jews but does say 750 or so Russian prisoner and sick. Who is lying? Which is the liar?

Again, that is why "testimony" is such Bullshit.

As the Zyklon-B-as already mentioned-was in granular form, it trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them. I did not look through the opening because it had to be closed as soon as the Zyklon-B had been poured in. After a few minutes there was silence. After some time had passed, it may have been ten to fifteen minutes, the gas chamber was opened. The dead lay higgledy-piggledy all over the place. It was a dreadful sight.

If you read the rest of the story you will find even more nonsense things than you have posted. Do your own research. Mr. Rudolf's time is his own. I appear to have more than he does. But my time is limited for people who will not do their homework.

It is even more limited for people who claim to be skeptics but who are not skeptics. That is, I have no time for people who will not do their homework.

Historian Michael Tregenza

Historian? What university granted that degree? At what level? Pardon if I have to inquire into the obvious and perhaps point out to you that you have no idea as to the answers.

And next I will have to ask after his academic credentials.

These are not trivial issues. The US Civil Service Commission declared me an Electronics Engineer in 1967 when my only credentials were a BS degree in Physics and not one college level course in electronics. And then the US Navy declared me a manager without the first course in management. So you see, such distinctions are far from trivial.

has provided us with translations of primary documents for a book he is writing on Rudolf Reder, who spent three months in Belzec before escaping in November, 1942. The sworn affidavit from Reder,

What is the genesis of the oath? The swearing? Where are the originals held for public verification?

about his experiences in the Lemberg Ghetto in Poland from November, 1941, to August 16, 1942, and in the Belzec extermination camp from August 17, 1942, to November, 1942, are revealing. Here is just one especially gruesome account of a gassing and mass burial soon after his arrival (Tregenza, 1996b):

So before reading the rest I expect to find the mass burial site was dug up and confirmed. But I know I will not. That is NEVER provided.

On 17 August 1942, I was deported to the Belzec extermination camp. We were unloaded and had to strip naked. Specialists were asked to step forward. I reported as a mechanic. Only eight men were left behind; the rest were immediately gassed. There were about 4,500 people on the transport. All the prisoners were taken to a big barrack where the women had their heads shaved bald. Then they were driven into a narrow corridor; there was a door there with the inscription, 'Bade und Inhalationsrüme.' [Bath and Inhalation Room.] In front of the door hung a flowerpot with some flowers. As one opened the door there was another corridor; to the right were three doors, and to the left three doors, which led into six gas chambers. Each chamber could hold 750 people. The building was of concrete. I know from my own observation that the gassing took no more than 20 minutes. The gas was fed through pipes from an engine in a small hut.

And therefore of course you must consider all public news accounts of carbon monoxide death by accident or suicide to be false as it takes longer than 20 minutes even when the engine runs inside the closed area.

This is another bit of evidence you are not a skeptic but a gullible true believer.

I operated a machine which dug the earth out of pits which served as graves for those gassed. I additionally had to drag the corpses out of the gas chambers and drag them to the pits. I dragged the corpses in this way: I placed a belt around a wrist and a second worker did the same, and thus we carried the corpses to the pits. There were about 30 graves, each grave was 100 meters long, 25 meters wide and 15 meters deep.

Excuse me, Mr. True Believer.

50 feet deep? Shoring anyone? The walls would collapse long before 20 feet. 80 feet wide? Did they give the bodies a good toss?

Gawd!!! You are a sucker. Gullible! A Rube! Ever go to see the Egress?

In my opinion, about 100,000 corpses could be buried. The corpses were stacked up to about 50 centimeters above the edge of the pit, because the corpses later settled.

You believe this crap you will believe anything.