Shout out to “jurgis” for giving me the idea to do a tier list for revisionist arguments. This is a perfect way to address and correct some of the Holocaust denial memes going around and to also spotlight my favorite arguments. Obviously this is all my opinion, but if you ask me, my opinion is pretty darn good. The filled out chart will be at the end of this article.
RED CROSS DOCUMENTS
I’ll begin with something I have not covered yet: the “Red Cross document” shown below, which I will refer to as the ITSDOC (you will see why). It is presented as a direct rebuke of the 6 million figure as the number of victims in the report is only 271k. However, presenting the report in this manner is a D-tier argument, and I will explain why and also how to present it correctly.
To rebuke the argument from above, a seasoned internet Holocaust affirmer might invoke the following correspondence from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC):
I hope you will have noticed that the date of the letter, 1975, is prior to the ITSDOC, which is dated 1979. Obviously it isn’t referring to the ITSDOC. Nonetheless, it can still be employed by internet Holocaust affirmers to confuse the issue. Upon seeing the above correspondence, a casual Holocaust believer may decide that all ICRC reports documenting deaths are illegitimate and possibly even fake. If you don’t have all the facts, you can find yourself being easily discredited.
It is important to note that the ITSDOC is an authentic report that originates from the International Tracing Services (ITS). I will turn to the CoDoH Holocaust encyclopedia to explain what the ITS is:
The ITS’s purpose was limited to collecting documents on the fate of the victims of persecution by National-Socialist Germany, and assist survivors in filing compensations claims against Germany. For a long time, its archival material was not publicly accessible due to privacy and safety concerns for the former persecutees.
In 2007, the ITS opened its archives to the public, and extended its purpose to research and education. It moreover prepared copies of its archival material for each governing country. In 2012, the Red Cross withdrew from the ITS’s management. In 2019, the ITS started posting its archival material online, with the aim of making everything accessible online eventually.
Until 1993, the ITS sent out lists of registered deaths in National-Socialist camps on request, consisting of data contained in their archives. The total death toll of their victim lists steadily rose over the years as their documentation became more complete. It reached a value just short of 300,000 victims in 1993. This includes both Jews and non-Jews.
Now, to be fair, the ITS was put under the direction of the IRC in 1954, and the document in question is from 1979, so they are related. But where the document is from isn’t the crux of the issue.
The crux of the issue is the number on the ITSDOC, and the two others like it (from 1984 and 1991), were never meant to be comprehensive record deaths from the camps; rather, they only reported documented deaths. The official Holocaust claim is that the majority of victims were never registered and thus there is no documentation for them. Thus, presenting the document as a direct refutation to the 6 million is a fail. Fear not, there is a gem inside this failure.
Let’s take a look at the following paragraph from the Arolsen Archives, which is what the ITS is known as today. It is part of an article refuting attempts to relativize the Holocaust using their documents:
This admission is what we can use as an A-tier revisionist argument. Here they are confirming that there is no documental evidence for the vast majority of the alleged 6 million deaths. All they have is witness testimony and circumstantial evidence. Those things on their own aren’t enough to convict of murder in a court of law. As I’ve point out before, the alleged German crime of murdering 6 million Jews was never proven in a legitimate court of law. Furthermore, as Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom puts it (page 11):
To cope with that finding, the claim has been made that the records are incomplete because large numbers of Jews were taken directly to the gas chambers and never registered—not even by name. Not only are contentions of this kind unfalsifiable, untestable and hence unscientific, but they reflect the degenerating character of the Holocaust paradigm, which has spawned no new data or research that could possibly overcome the mountain of evidence against it.
That is a solid A-tier argument right there. Especially considering that Holocaust fabulists repeat the mantra that the Holocaust is the most documented historical event. To make an argument S-tier it would need to be memeable. This one is too complex and requires more explaining than a meme can provide, thus it sits at a solid A. I am giving the ITSDOC a D rating as discussion if it at least leads to something productive.
Let’s move on.
CHIMNEYS
There are two chimney-related talking points to address. One is a B-tier and the other is F.
Let’s get the F-tier out of the way: the infamous detached chimney. Below we can see a typical presentation of the detached chimney meme:
And here we can see an internet Holocaust affirmer easily debunking it:
Yes that’s right, detached chimneys are a real thing. Krema I in Auschwitz had one and the Soviets rebuilt it. There is no argument to be gleaned from this fact. It’s not even worth bringing up.
I have previously written about the “fake” chimney, and in that article I made the point that there is nothing sinister about the presence of a chimney. The existence of crematoria and their chimneys are not evidence of a genocide. As I, and many others, have said countless times: cremation was used to save lives by curbing the spread of disease. Attempts to turn these facilities into a symbol of genocide is peak dishonest propaganda.
This brings us to the second chimney talking point: flaming chimneys. Along with barbed wire and monocle-wearing SS officers, flaming chimneys are a key aesthetic of Holocaust folklore. The following image from my article on this topic showcases examples of eyewitness’ spooky stories about flaming chimneys:
Flames shooting out of crematoria chimneys is not a normal function. Not only is it not normal, it probably means you have a chimney fire. See the image below if you’d like the scientific reason chimney fires would have not been at thing the Jewish inmates would have seen:
The fact that eyewitnesses included fanciful tales of flaming chimneys tells us that they weren’t providing an objective testimony. Whether they were misremembering or lying, their testimony is unreliable regardless. This exposure of unreliable witness testimony is why flaming chimneys gets a B rating from me.
I’m going to call that good for part one. I’d like to conclude by explaining why it is important to be accurate when doing Holocaust denial/revisionism. Besides the fact that one should strive to be accurate in all things, with Holocaust revisionism it is especially important as we are already on an uphill battle. One purpose of Holocaust denial memes is to get believers to at least start questioning the official narrative. If one such person finds out that a meme is wrong, they are probably going to disregard revisionism entirely. Spreading awareness is good and necessary, but we have to be smart about it.
The holocaust was real in my mind