By Carolyn Yeager

In 1995, Ernst Lobethall gave his testimony as a survivor of “The Holocaust” to the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation for their video library, as thousands of others have done. In it, he had some words to say about a British soldier he met while interned at Auschwitz III (Monowitz) who had done him a favor.

Lobethall records that the soldier he called Ginger “gave me a letter and 10 packs of cigarettes, and a bar of chocolate from my sister. Ten packs of English cigarettes – it’s like being given Rockefeller Center.” He also said, “I had no heavy socks to put on my boots; for two packs of Players cigarettes, (pause) and that, later on, came, again, to save my life on the death marches that took place in 1945.” This clip from the video was shown on the BBC Online News Magazine on November 29, 2009.[1] The article says that

Mr Lobethall traded two packs of Players cigarettes in return for getting his shoes resoled. It helped save his life when thousands perished or were murdered on the notorious death marches out of the camps in winter in 1945.

Lobethall’s testimony was at some point taken under consideration by the Yad Vashem Memorial Museum’s “Commission for the Designation of the Righteous,” a rather pompously-named committee, headed since 2005 by Israel Supreme Court Justice Jacob Tuerkel, that examines candidates before bestowing upon them the equally grandiose title of “Righteous Among the Nations.”
(Read more…)

By Carlo Mattogno

On 27 January 2010, the tenth “Holocaust Remembrance Day”, Elie Wiesel was invited into Montecitorio Hall, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Republic where he had the opportunity to give a brief speech. The president of the Chamber, Gianfranco Fini, introduced him as “the most authoritative living witness of the horrors of the Shoah among the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps”.[1] But is he really a witness?

Is Elie Wiesel an impostor?

On 3 March 2009, a Hungarian website published an article entitled Még mindig kísérti a haláltábor (The extermination camp is still tempting)[2] and outlining important revelations by Miklós Grüner, a former deportee to Auschwitz. The article was translated and appeared the following day under the title Auschwitz Survivor Claims Elie Wiesel is an Impostor[3]. The text reads as follows: (Read more…)

On February 4, the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported the following piece of news:

Dr. Josef Mengele

The grandson of a Holocaust survivor has purchased the diary of Dr. Josef Mengele, which was put up for sale in the United States, a Connecticut-based auctioneer said Tuesday.

The buyer, an East Coast Jewish philanthropist who remained anonymous, paid an undisclosed sum for the 180-page journal, which he intends to donate to a Holocaust museum, said Bill Panagopulos of Alexander Autographs. [...] (Read more…)

By Carolyn Yeager

Dear Dr. Neander,

Thank you for your letter of February 3rd. First let me assure you that you are welcome to any assistance I can give you in keeping the facts about Irene Zisblatt and the entire “Auschwitz experience” in order. (See 2nd paragraph at:
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/02/response-to-c-yeager.html#_ftnref2)
As a self-described independent scholar who has moved to Poland from Germany (I gather) and lives in Cracow, close to the Auschwitz-Birkenau (A-B) Memorial Museum, you obviously have a desire to be, or believe that you are, an “expert” on A-B. Very good, since we certainly need real experts to help us deal with the many, many falsehoods and perversions promulgated about this place since at least 1941, but especially after 1945. (Read more…)

By Carlo Mattogno (February 2010)

Joachim Neander claims that he is able to give the name of two prisoners who were gassed at Auschwitz. He notes that the “Bunkerbuch” on 5 September 1941 has recorded the death of three detainees, Fritz Renner, Bruno Grosman and Roman Drost, of which the first two are Germans. Since «they all died the same day when the first mass gassing was carried out in the basement of Block 11 (date Sep 5, 1941, according to reports that, shortly after the event, reached the Polish Government-in-Exile in London)» this shows that they were gassed. He adds that «Carlo Mattogno does neither take into consideration the “Bunker” ledger nor the Rögner report nor the accounts of the Polish prisoners who were involved in the September 5, 1941, “action”».[1] (Read more…)

(As a celebration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Incovenient History revisionist blog is proud to post a presentation of Carlo Mattogno’s new massive study on the alleged homicidal gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, written by its author. Translated from the Italian by Thomas Kues)

By Carlo Mattogno (January 2010)

My work Le camere a gas di Auschwitz. Studio storico-tecnico sugli “indizi criminali” di Jean-Claude Pressac e sulla “convergenza di prove” di Robert Jan van Pelt (The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz. A Historical and Technical Study on the “Criminal Evidence” of Jean-Claude Pressac and the “convergence of evidence” of Robert Jan van Pelt, Effepi, Genoa 2009) has now been in print for several months and, as expected, it has been met with almost complete silence. Below I will speak of it briefly as a dignified celebration of the “Remembrance Day”. The work in question is not “negationist” but *affirmationist* because it refutes the interpretations proposed by the authors mentioned in its title while reconstructing, piece by piece, thanks to documents unknown to Pressac and van Pelt, the real context of events. It is therefore not a work of sterile or negative criticism, but a positive contribution to our knowledge of the camp.

First some technical information. The book consists of 715 pages, whereof 658 are text and the remaining 51 contains reproductions of documents. The critical apparatus consists of 2,510 notes with references to documents from 22 archives and a bibliography listing approximately 270 works, including over 80 on the subject of cremations. The appendices contain, among other things, a glossary of more than 400 German technical terms. The study is divided into five parts and 19 chapters. The table of contents below already provides a fairly accurate idea of the topics that are treated. I will therefore limit myself to making some brief comments. (Read more…)

by Carolyn Yeager

Joachim Neander, PhD, an independent scholar from Cracow, Poland, examines Irene Weisberg Zisblatt’s holocaust survivor narrative and concludes it is “not in accordance with the historically established facts,” is “exaggerated,” “implausible” and not true overall. Neander has contributed to publications in Poland, Germany, Israel and the USA. In 2001-02 he had a Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

His January 9th article Irene Zisblatt, the “Diamond Girl”- Fact or Fiction? can be read here: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/01/irene-zisblatt-diamond-girl-fact-or.html.

Dr. Neander asks in the title of his critical review of Irene Zisblatt’s autobiography The Fifth Diamond, which purports to be a Holocaust survivor ‘true story,’ or memoir, whether it is fact or fiction. He comes to the only conclusion possible for a man who wishes to maintain his reputation as a scholar—that it is mostly fiction.

However, probably for the reason that he seems to have been assigned this project by some well-known Holocaust defenders (Kenneth Waltzer, Chairman of the Jewish Studies Dept. at the University of Michigan, who provided him with the Seigelstein documents, for one) and he is a Holocaust defender himself, he has tried to soften the blow wherever he thinks he can, going out of his way to find some positive things to say about “Mrs. Zisblatt” and her narrative. These positives are mainly in the realm of having a forgiving spirit and a sympathetic attitude toward an “elderly lady” who has suffered in her life. But Neander rightly decides that truth must be upheld, it being more important that not hurting someone’s feelings. (Read more…)

Irene Weisberg Zisblatt writes of swallowing the same diamonds over and over again for a year in order to save all she has left of her family. What else does she say—and why is it not believable?

Apophenia: the phenomenon of seeing things that aren’t there. People will see, and believe, what they expect to see, what they want to see, or even what they are told they are seeing, as often as they will see, and believe, what they are actually seeing.

By Carolyn Yeager

Part Five

(ST=Shoah Testimony, FD=The Fifth Diamond, LD=The Last Days, RI=Radio Interview. See Part One for further explanation.)

Displaced Persons camp

(ST) She only says “They took us to Salzburg, Austria … I was with people from Poland, from different countries, waiting for borders to open up, waiting for papers to come through to go to different countries. Most of the people were hoping to go to Palestine, but that was closed too.” (@3hr3min) She says (Jews) had to be smuggled in and “we tried that also, we did get to Italy and laid on the beaches for 5 days and nights waiting for a ship to come get us … but there was no ship.”[24] When asked by the interviewer—“Who did you go with?”—she remained vague by answering, “Just, uh, kids that, uh, well, there were a couple of leaders that were very devoted, uh, Haganah[25] people and Zionists … they came one night” and recruited the residents to try to get to Palestine illegally. She says, “Most of the people, we didn’t even know each other.” She stayed in the DP camp until 1947. She had information placed in newspapers in the States and an uncle in the Bronx answered her “article” in The Forward.[26]
Remarks: When she says ‘us’ followed by ‘people from Poland’, it indicates she was with mostly Polish people. I suspect Zisblatt changed “Sabka’s” identity from Polish to Lithuanian because, as time went on, she wanted to distance herself from every Polish association, not least because she is hiding her early marriage to the Pole Alter Lewin, along with other Polish ties she may also be hiding. I note her failure to put names to any of the “we’s” and “us’s” she is so fond of using. She spent two years in the DP camp, was never alone, and not one friend or helper is mentioned by name. Two years versus one year in Nazi camps—the one year is filled with events and experiences worthy of an entire book, but the two (in spite of her marriage) are devoid of anything worth talking about. (Read more…)

Irene Weisberg Zisblatt writes of swallowing the same diamonds over and over again for a year in order to save all she has left of her family. What else does she say—and why is it not believable?

Apophenia: the phenomenon of seeing things that aren’t there. People will see, and believe, what they expect to see, what they want to see, or even what they are told they are seeing, as often as they will see, and believe, what they are actually seeing.

By Carolyn Yeager

Part Four

(ST=Shoah Testimony, FD=The Fifth Diamond, LD=The Last Days, RI=Radio Interview. See Part One for further explanation.)

Went to gas chamber with gypsy families, or 1500 women?

(ST) “They selected me with the gypsies.” (@2hr11min) “I think it was in December, because it was cold, snow … and the gypsy camp was not too far from the C lager; it was a family camp. I was just taken out of my (roll call) all by myself.” Then, as if she suddenly remembered [19], she says, “I think that it was Mengele that took me outta there.” (This is first mention of Mengele since saying she didn’t know if he was the doctor who selected her for her first experiment.) She was put on a truck transport of Gypsy families on their way to the “gas chamber.”
Remarks: The last “gassing” at Birkenau, according to the official narrative, took place on October 30, 1944. But Zisblatt has no idea of this when she recalls it being in December. This may be the strongest “evidence” of fraud in her narrative. Surely one wouldn’t forget the exact time one was sent to die in a “gas chamber.” If she decided on December, so that she could claim the longest time possible at Birkenau—May to December (7 months max, although she claims 8 months)—she has fallen into a trap. May to October would be only 5 months.
(FD) “Suddenly,” at mid-morning, she was selected with 1500 other women to leave the camp (p. 74). Mengele is not present. The women were ordered to remove their clothes and marched naked until they were forced into a narrow passageway. At this point she realizes she’s in the #3 gas chamber.
(LD) Nothing about her gas chamber experience is brought up in the film.

(Read more…)

Irene Weisberg Zisblatt writes of swallowing the same diamonds over and over again for a year in order to save all she has left of her family. What else does she say—and why is it not believable?

Apophenia: the phenomenon of seeing things that aren’t there. People will see, and believe, what they expect to see, what they want to see, or even what they are told they are seeing, as often as they will see, and believe, what they are actually seeing.

By Carolyn Yeager

Part Three

(ST=Shoah Testimony, FD=The Fifth Diamond, LD=The Last Days, RI=Radio Interview. See Part One for further explanation.)

Suicide-at-the-fence punishment changes from 5 to 100

(ST) Claims the SS threatened to torture to death 5 prisoners for every one who committed suicide by touching the electric fence. “Many people did go to the barbed wire … every time a transport came through, the barbed wires were electrified. When it was on, people would walk up to it just to die. […] so they (SS) said: For every person that’s going to take their lives, they’re gonna torture to death 5 of us. Of course, everybody ignored the barbed wire after that.”
(LD) Now she says the SS killed 100 inmates “in front of everybody” for each prisoner who electrocuted themselves at the fence. “When the electricity came on they ran up to it to electrocute themselves.”
(FD) She left this patently false story out of her book.

Tattooed right away or later?

(ST) She does not say she was tattooed on arrival, nor does she ever give her number. Later, when telling of the tattoo removal “experiment” she gives this bizarre explanation (@1hr31min): “I wasn’t tattooed right away. I was tattooed after they selected me for something. The reason we wasn’t tattooed right away is they didn’t want us to live. We were in that camp as reserves for the gas chamber, for the crematorium, because they were burning two men and one woman, because that was the best, efficient thing to have the crematorium work efficiently—because the woman has a little more flesh on her body because of her breasts, and the men don’t, so they were using two men and one woman for the crematorium. So we were reserve, is what we were told – every time we asked for some food or some ration [we were told], ‘You think you’re here to live? You’re here to be a reserve for that chimney!’ That’s when we found out what that chimney was.”
(FD) She receives a tattoo on her arm – number 61397 [16] – along with everyone else upon arrival, while she’s still holding the diamonds in her hand. (p. 35)
(LD) Another woman survivor testifies they were given a tattoo upon arrival. (Read more…)