(Update 6/15/2023: I have been made aware that ChatGPT has been caught making up answers. While I am fact checking information received from ChatGPT this article is an exploration into the workings of ChatGPT therefore I will leave it as is. Just be aware of ChatGPT’s shortcomings while reading this article.)
I recently got into a bit of an argument with Bill, my robot assistant, while I was conducting research for an article. I only asked for the number of prisoner barracks in Buchenwald and Bill just had to bring up 6 million caveats like he always does. Bill, I didn’t ask about the conditions in Buchenwald, why did you feel the need to add that? Are you trying to sell me on something?
I had to remind Bill that starvation in the camps was due to the Allied bombing of food supplies (read my article about that here). Bill would only admit that the Allied bombings had an ‘impact’. He then claimed that there was “a deliberate policy of the Nazi regime to deprive prisoners of adequate nourishment and care.”
A Nazi policy? Well there must be some evidence of that besides witness testimony, so I pressed Bill about it. You only need to pay attention to point 1 below as the other three are things I did not ask for. In point 1 Bill brings up a memo from Himmler and some nebulous array of documents of which he gives not one concrete example. In the last paragraph Bill utters that phase that Holocaust affirmers love to use, ‘taken together’. Bill, I asked you for a very particular piece of information, why can’t you just give it to me?
I had to be a little curt with BIll and tell him that a memo from Himmler is not a Nazi policy. Bill conceded this point. I asked again where is a document with a Nazi policy to starve prisoners. In another attempt to answer my query Bill brought up the ‘Commissar Order’ and the ‘Hunger Plan’. Two things that had nothing to do with the Jews in the camps, which is what we were discussing. Bill’s ‘taken together’ statement at the end gets a little weaker. It went from ‘the evidence makes it clear’ to ‘this evidence suggests’.
Bill once again had to admit that his answer did not satisfy my requirements. In a stunning turn of events he brought up a policy that actually discredits his position. The “Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Prisoners” states that food should be adequate for the maintenance of the prisoners. So the one relevant policy that Bill was able to cite directly contradicts his claim. Good job, Bill!
At the end of his answer from above BIll said, “In summary, while there may not be a single document that explicitly outlines a Nazi policy of starvation in concentration camps, there is ample evidence to suggest that the deliberate withholding of food and medical care was an intentional part of the broader system of mistreatment and abuse inflicted upon prisoners by the Nazi regime.” Saying ‘there is no single document’ is also common thing that Holocaust affirmers will say when there are no documents or physical evidence to backup their claims but they don’t want to admit it. The Holocaust narrative is like a house of cards. Carefully stacked with with dubious witness testimony, misrepresented photographs and straight up lies. Then it is protected from the slightest breeze through the abuse of authority and censorship.
While you can not directly question an article or documentary like you can with AI chat, you most certainly can, and should, look into Holocaust claims and encourage others to do the same. Preferably by sending them to this website 😀
