Yesterday I answered two questions about the mass graves of Zhitomir. 1. Was an archeological investigation done? Yes, but all we have is a Soviet report. 2. If so, how many bodies were found? An estimated 20,000, but all we have is a soviet report and no corroborating evidence.
Now it’s time to answer: 3. Were they even Jewish? 4. If so, were they civilians or enemies of war?
Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDoT) references a website from Holocaust Controversies. This report merely says local inhabitants.
If we are to take them at face value, as orthodox Holocaust historians do, the Operational Situation Reports (OSR) do specifically say Jews. However in the case of OSR No. 47 and 86 it is clear that they were not peaceful civilians minding their own business. They were ‘saboteurs and political functionaries’. In OSR No. 86 it was reported that they were sabotaging blackout regulations making the town a target for Soviet attack, thus endangering the whole town. It is also important to note that the numbers in these reports do not add up to anything close to 20,000.
For OSR No. 106 from the last paragraph of the image above there is no mention anything about why the Jews were shot. To find out why is as simple as reading the report HDoT sourced. Then we find out things like the Germans being concerned about getting food to the civilians. We also learn that the city inhabitants were having problems with the Jewish populace.

Here is the section in OSR No. 106 that HDoT quoted from. Once you read the whole thing and learn that the Jews in Zhitomir were acting as partisans against the Germans it becomes clear that they were not killed for simply being Jewish.
The following is a report from the Einsatzgruppen C I found in Carlo Mattogno’s book, The Einsatzgruppen In The Occupied Eastern Territories: Genesis, Missions and Actions (which is Mattogno’s response to Holocaust Controversies’ attacks on his work). It is further proof that Jews were not being targeted for simply being Jews:
HDoT is taking advantage of the fact that most people are taught that Jews were persecuted by the Germans for no reason whatsoever. Because of this they see the targeting of Jews as proof of a genocide. Many people are unaware of the danger that Bolsheviks posed because they don’t even know about the Red Terror that swept throughout Russia after WW1. Communist takeover was a real threat to Germany and it was the NSDAP (Nazi party) that stopped it. To pretend that Jews didn’t do anything is precisely the kind of victor’s story you’d expect to hear from the Allied governments. Especially considering the war crimes that they obfuscated by promoting the Holocaust story.
3. Were they even Jewish? The Soviet report did not specify the ethnicity of the alleged 20,000 bodies in the mass graves. The German documents did specify that Jews were liquidated and shot but the numbers do not add up to 20,000.
4. If so, were they civilians or enemies of war? Enemies of war.
Now that all the questions are answered we can determine that the mass graves of Zhitomir are not evidence of a German perpetrated genocide. This leads me to comment on what the Holocaust is and isn’t. The Holocaust is an allegation of homicidal gas chambers and a plan to systematically exterminate European Jews. The Holocaust is not partisans being shot in during a war. I consider bringing ‘bullets in the east’ into the Holocaust narrative to be an attempt to distract from the problems of the gas chamber claims. Nonetheless these issues must be addressed and address them I shall.
I address HDoT’s final point on mass graves in part four.