Who thought that Gerdian imbecility can’t get any worse ...

... should read the Cesspit thread Gerdes pledges to pay Kola's Sobibor bill, in which Gerdes treats his CODOH buddies to his latest publicity stunt:

Read more!

According to the dullest of the dull (Roberto Muehlenkamp), Andrzej Kola is allegedly refusing to publish his report on his alleged "archeological excavations" at Sobibor because he has not been paid for his work.

RM (via the VNN forum post #1012):

Quote:
As I learned from Yoram Haimi of the Sobibor Archaeological Project, the reason why Prof. Kola has not yet published a detailed and illustrated report about his 2001 findings is that he wasn’t paid by the Polish government entity that commissioned his work in 2001. So Prof. Kola is sitting on his findings, so to say, until this problem is solved – which I hope will happen in a near future.


RM (via VNN forum post #1036)

Quote:
What I'm waiting for? ... a detailed report by Prof. Kola


Well, I for one am sick and tired of waiting. I am using this forum to announce that - I will be starting a pledge drive to raise the funds needed to pay the so-called "archeologist" Andrzej Kola for his alleged "excavations" of the alleged "huge mass graves" of Sobibor.

What I need from the boys over at holocaust controversies (I'm sure they will be more than willing to help me get this project started and completed) to get started on this very important project are:

1 - The name of the Polish government entity that commissioned his alleged work.

2 - Proof that this alleged entity commissioned his work.

3 - Proof that this entity owes Kola any money

4 - The amount of money this entity allegedly owes to kola.

5 - A contact person who speaks English in this alleged Polish government entity. (Or someone who can translate for me.)

6 - Contact information for Kola.

And I will need the following from Kola:

7 - The amount that he claims he is allegedly owed.

8 - Proof of said claim.

9 - A pledge that he will release this phantom report that he is allegedly "sitting on" immediately after he gets his money.

I would also like to take this opportunity to publicly challenge Michael Shermer to be the first person to pledge a contribution to this fund and to pledge that he will release the results of his alleged Sobibor investigation at the same time that Kola does his.

Now I am presently leaving for the holiday weekend, and would like the above tasks to be completed and the information posted on the holocaust controversies blog by no later than next Tues. afternoon.

Time to get cracking boys. After all, you do want to help me pay Kola the money he's owed and help stop holocaust denial - don't you?

What I wrote in my VNN post # 1036 was the following

What I'm waiting for, the self-projecting hysteric asks?

Let’s see …

I’m waiting for time and means to go to Sobibor, obtain permission to disturb the ash heap (which I doubt will be granted) and enlist the services of an expert to analyze the human remains and certify that they are in fact human remains (which I also doubt anyone will do for just little me).

So waiting for what comes of an assessment of the mass graves’ contents by the SAP and/or for a detailed report by Prof. Kola seems a more promising approach.

Contrary to what quote-mining Gerdes apparently tries to make believe, I'm in no hurry to see the results of archaeological work at Sobibor, be it Prof. Kola's 2001 investigation, the investigation currently under way by the Sobibor Archaeology Project, or both. A good thing takes time, as a German saying goes. And the longer loonies like Gerdes suffer in anticipation of what is coming at them (hence presumably Gerdes' professed impatience), the better.

If Gerdes is "sick and tired of waiting", that's his problem, and it's up to him how he solves it.

If he feels like doing so by contributing to a worthy cause – the publication of a report by Prof. Kola about the investigations he conducted at Sobibor in 2001 – that’s fine.

But why, then, does he demand that the contributors of this blog get him Prof. Kola's contact, proof of this-and-that, etc.?

As concerns the entity that commissioned Prof. Kola’s work in 2001, Gerdes seems to have a short memory. He apparently forgot what I wrote in my VNN post # 916:

C.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerdes
7 - Tell us what Polish government entity that commissioned Kola's "work."
Question irrelevant for the purpose of proving mass murder at Sobibor (which has already been proven anyway, see my post # 777 under http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=811075&postcount=777 ) and also without relevance in the context of the NAFCASH challenge.

Nice guy’s answer to irrelevant question:

On the site http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/historia/index.htm , which is quoted in my post # 807 on this thread (Gerdes should read my posts before hacking away), the following is stated:

Quote:
In 2000-2001 the proper archeological research was initiated by professor Andrzej Kola's team from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, commissioned by the Council for Protection of Memory of the Battle and Martyrdom in Warsaw (Kola 2000, 2001).

As to the rest of his demands, the person best positioned to help Gerdes obtain the information, contacts etc. that he requires is Mr. Yoram Haimi, director of the Sobibor Archaeology Project, who has been in contact with Prof. Kola and accordingly informed me of what Prof. Kola’s problems are. Gerdes has already e-mailed Yoram Haimi, or so he claims in his VNN post # 1044, regarding the mound of human ashes at Sobibor.

So what is Gerdes waiting for to contact Yoram Haimi regarding his offer to solve Prof. Kola’s funding problems, if that offer is more than just a transparent bluff?

The contributors of this blog are not Gerdes' errand boys.

What’s particularly amusing, by the way, is the deadline set by Gerdes for his demands to be met:

Now I am presently leaving for the holiday weekend, and would like the above tasks to be completed and the information posted on the holocaust controversies blog by no later than next Tues. afternoon.

The poor fellow is seriously in need of good professional help.

I wouldn’t be surprised if even the CODOH clowns were beginning to feel uneasy at having him around. The same suspicion has already been expressed by tloB2 in his post # 309 on the RODOH forum:

That Gerdes fella is seriously retarded. It seem like they are uncomfortable with him there too. No "valued contributor" for him...

I must have become an obsession for poor little Gerdes, …

... judging by how he keeps running over to his CODOH buddies - i.e. to a forum he well knows I have been banned from – to mouth off about me.

Read more!


The fellow’s latest hysterical rampage can be witnessed in the CODOH thread NAFCASH throws Dullenkamp a bone, where Gerdes made a fuss about a recent change to his "challenge", already announced in his post # 1034 on the VNN thread Archeological Investigations of Treblinka.

My reply to this "bone" can be read in my VNN post # 1036, from which the following quote is taken:

What I'm waiting for, the self-projecting hysteric asks?

Let’s see …

I’m waiting for time and means to go to Sobibor, obtain permission to disturb the ash heap (which I doubt will be granted) and enlist the services of an expert to analyze the human remains and certify that they are in fact human remains (which I also doubt anyone will do for just little me).

So waiting for what comes of an assessment of the mass graves’ contents by the SAP and/or for a detailed report by Prof. Kola seems a more promising approach.

Even Gerdes’ fellow idiot "Mr. Nobody", who seems to have read this reply, must have realized that official permission to disturb the mound of human ashes at Sobibor (especially to the extent required in order to confirm by expert examination that and how many human ashes it contains) is an issue, judging by his reference to "Permits" in the mouthful of imbecile bluster he produced in his post of Thu Aug 28, 2008 2:47 pm.

And of course it’s not like I set my schedules by Gerdes' retarded howling, or have the time and means available tomorrow to travel to Sobibor, apply for a permit that is unlikely to be granted, and enlist the assistance of an expert who can analyze the ash mound’s contents for me, assuming I find someone willing and able to do that.

The next post on this CODOH thread contains some babbling about "integrity" from someone who should never even use the word – Jonni "Hannover" Hargis, the miserable coward who lacks even the minimum amount of integrity required to allow open, uncensored debate on his own forum (not to mention ever stepping out of his warm and cozy Führerbunker into the cold world of open debate).

Then, in his post of Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:02 pm, Gerdes indulged in one of his favorite games – misrepresenting my statements. The exchange that Gerdes "quoted":

"BTW Roberta, why do you keep running from the queations about the soil core samples of Sobibor? What do the frauds at the Sobibor Archaeology Project say those core samples are comprised of?"

The dull one:

"I don’t know what the members of the Sobibor Archaeology Project say about the composition of these samples. In my last phone conversation with Yoram Haimi, I forgot to ask this question. I shall ask it next time we speak."

never took place in the manner presented. Here’s what the conversation actually was like, see my VNN post # 954:

To Gerdes’ self-projecting question:

13 - BTW Roberta, why do you keep running from the queations about the soil core samples of Sobibor?

I answered as follows:

This was my answer to an identically worded previous question:

Quote:
Question irrelevant for the purpose of proving mass murder at Sobibor (which has already been proven anyway, see my post # 777 under http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=811075&postcount=777 ) and also without relevance in the context of the NAFCASH challenge.

Nice guy’s answer to irrelevant question:

As lying Gerdes well knows, the only one who has been running away from questions regarding these core drill samples:

http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/badania/F5.html


http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/badania/F6.html


http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/badania/F7.html


is Gerdes himself. I have asked him several times what, other than ashes of human bone and tissue, wood ashes, bone ash or lime the substances distinguishable from the light-brown soil in these samples could possibly be. He has neither provided an alternative explanation and nor had the courage to at least openly admit that he has no alternative explanation.

(I’m still waiting for Gerdes to answer my questions regarding these three core samples, by the way.)

Gerdes’ next question:

14 - What do the frauds at the Sobibor Archaeology Project say those core samples are comprised of?

I replied to as follows:

This was my answer to a set of previous questions including the above:

Quote:
Question irrelevant for the purpose of proving mass murder at Sobibor (which has already been proven anyway, see my post # 777 under http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=811075&postcount=777 ) and also without relevance in the context of the NAFCASH challenge.

Nice guy’s answer to irrelevant question:

1. Unlike Mr. Gerdes and others of his ilk, the members of the Sobibor Archaeology Project are not frauds. They are serious and competent archaeologists.

2. What I have learned from them about these samples is that they pertain to Prof. Kola’s archaeological investigation in 2001, see above answer B.2.

3. This means that if – as is probably the case – these core samples were analyzed to confirm that they contain what their aspect suggests, this was done in 2001 by or on behalf of Prof. Kola’s team, and not by or on behalf of the Sobibor Archaeology Project.

I might add that I don’t know what the members of the Sobibor Archaeology Project say about the composition of these samples. In my last phone conversation with Yoram Haimi, I forgot to ask this question. I shall ask it next time we speak.

So what Gerdes did in his CODOH post of Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:02 pm was to

a) Omit my inconvenient reply to his question numbered 13,

b) Omit most of my reply to his question numbered 14,

c) Present his questions numbered 13 and 14 as a single block of questions, and

d) Present the last part of my answer to his question numbered 14 (which was an additional statement after the quote of an answer to a set of previous questions including the one numbered 14) as my only answer to that supposed block of questions.

Four smaller misrepresentations adding up to a bigger one – is that four lies, or is it just one? I'll let our readers decide.

Gerdes continued as follows:

Of course the liar has yet to actually answer the question. Seems he's tucked tail agian. What a coward.

I couldn’t agree more, as I'm still waiting for an answer to my questions about the Sobibor core samples, which Gerdes has been running away from ever since I first asked them.

Needless to say, I won't call up Yoram Haimi just to ask him a question that would allow me to answer Gerdes' question what the archaeologist's opinion about these core samples is. That has time until I talk to Mr. Haimi about further developments of the Sobibor Archaeology Project's work. It's not stinking Gerdes who gets to set my schedules.

Not content with the lies in his post of Thu Aug 28, 2008 10:02 pm, Gerdes spent most of his following posts on this thread (when he did not vent his frustration into rambling against the Sobibor Archaeological Project) trying to make believe I had claimed that Prof. Kola had taken samples from the Sobibor ash mound during his archaeological investigations in 2001, in which he discovered seven mass graves in the Sobibor killing area.

All that Gerdes achieved by these puny attacks, as so often before, was to show that he's too dumb to understand what I wrote, or then a very clumsy and transparent liar.

I guess one needs to have as many loose screws inside one's head as Gerdes has to understand my statement quoted in Gerdes’ post of Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:11 pm as containing a claim that Prof. Kola took core samples from the ash mound.

As to the loudest howling (with the inevitable "lying coward" self-projection) in Gerdes' post of Fri Aug 29, 2008 12:05 pm:

RM quote:

"The aspect of the substance that the mound consists of, which has a light gray coloration different from the light-brown color of the soil at Sobibor (see photos mentioned in answer B.3 above) suggests the accuracy of captions describing this mound as a mound consisting of or containing human ashes."

And my response:

"Notice how he's trying to imply that there have been core samples taken from the mound. Let's see the photos of these alleged core samples and let’s see the results of the analysis of the alleged samples."

Of course the lying coward refuses to produce the evidence.

a look at my VNN post # 916 is sufficient to expose another example of nonsense that can at best be attributed to the poor fellow’s meager intellect.

To Gerdes’ demand:

9 - Show us proof that the "huge ash mountain" of Sobibor is actually comprised of human ash.

I replied as follows, in post # 916:

Question irrelevant for the purpose of proving mass murder at Sobibor (which has already been proven anyway, see my post # 777 under http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=811075&postcount=777 ), but of relevance for the "bonus reward" of the NAFCASH challenge.
Nice guy’s answer to question of limited relevance:

All captioned photos showing this mound of ash, while not necessarily if at all describing it as "huge" or as a "mountain", refer to it as being made up of or containing human ash. Photos of this mound include, without limitation, the photos shown under item IV.2.3 in my post # 777 under http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=811075&postcount=777 and those shown under the following links:

http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/sobibor_dzisiaj/slides/sobibor039.html

http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/sobibor_dzisiaj/slides/sobibor040.html

http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/sobibor_dzisiaj/slides/sobibor043.html

http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/sobibor_dzisiaj/slides/sobibor082.html

The aspect of the substance that the mound consists of, which has a light gray coloration different from the light-brown color of the soil at Sobibor (see photos mentioned in answer B.3 above) suggests the accuracy of captions describing this mound as a mound consisting of or containing human ashes.

So does the associated documentary and eyewitness evidence proving that Sobibor was an extermination camp and that the bodies of the victims were disposed of by burning them, which is mentioned in my post # 777 under http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=811075&postcount=777.

The conclusion that the mound in question is comprised of human ash is thus the conclusion that is borne out by all known evidence and belied by none. It is also the conclusion towards which various sources of evidence independent of each other converge. This convergence of various sources of evidence independent of each other, alone or together with the absence of any evidence to the contrary, is proof that the mound in question is comprised of human ash.

Did I say here that these core samples:

http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/badania/F5.html


http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/badania/F6.html


http://www.sobibor.edu.pl/angielska/galerie/badania/F7.html


were taken from the ash heap, or that any samples were taken from the ash heap at all?

Of course not.

What I said was that

a) all known evidence about what happened at Sobibor supports the conclusion that the heap is actually made up of human ashes, and

b) so does the aspect of the heap, which has a light-gray coloration whereas the soil of Sobibor – as can be seen on the above-mentioned core sample photographs – has a light brown coloration.

In other words, my argument was that the substance that the mound consists of cannot be the soil of Sobibor, because the soil of Sobibor – as can be seen on core sample photographs taken elsewhere in the camp – has a different color than the substance of which the mound is made.

Whereas this "misunderstanding" still allows – with a huge amount of generosity – for giving Gerdes the benefit of doubt that it was due to his stupidity alone (notwithstanding the – unnecessary – clarification I provided in my VNN post # 1014 and repeated in my post # 1039) the same cannot be said of this quote-mining exercise:

"The human ashes that the mound at Sobibor is comprised of may have been dug out of one of more of the pits discovered by Prof. Kola in 2001."

Notice that he's too stupid to understand that the "ash mountain" has been there for years.

What the fellow obviously tried to make believe here is that I claimed the mound of human ashes at Sobibor to have resulted from Prof. Kola's excavations in 2001.

In VNN post # 916, I replied to Gerdes' question:

10 - Show us were the huge pit is that this "mountain of human ash" was dug out of.

as follows:

Question irrelevant for the purpose of proving mass murder at Sobibor (which has already been proven anyway, see my post # 777 under http://www.vnnforum.com/showpost.php?p=811075&postcount=777 ), and also without relevance for the "bonus reward" or the main reward of the NAFCASH challenge, as currently worded under http://www.nafcash.com/ .

Nice guy’s answer to irrelevant question:

The human ashes that the mound at Sobibor is comprised of may have been dug out of one of more of the pits discovered by Prof. Kola in 2001. They were probably brought to the surface by postwar robbery digging, which would mean it is impossible to determine which of the grave pits contained these specific ashes.

I highlighted the sentence that stinking liar Gerdes’ conveniently omitted in his CODOH post of Fri Aug 29, 2008 12:05 pm. He omitted it because it clearly shows what my assumption regarding the origin of the ashes that make up the Sobibor ash mound was: human ashes brought to the surface by postwar robbery digging were collected by the people in charge of the Sobibor memorial site and put together into this ash mound. In other words, what I’m supposedly "too stupid to understand" (that the ash mound has been at Sobibor long before Prof. Kola’s 2001 investigation) is exactly what follows from my highlighted statement.

So much for my having claimed that the ash mound at Sobibor has anything to do with Prof. Kola's 2001 investigation.

And so much for the truthfulness of quote-mining Gerdes.

Following yet another of Gerdes’ self-defeating rampages, we have some Greek clown who calls himself "KostasL" and, in his post of Fri Aug 29, 2008 7:46 pm, echoed the conspiracy theories previously uttered by "Hannover" Hargis and the fellow who aptly calls himself "Mr. Nobody", as follows:

I ask you this :

What if they finally come with falsified evidence that "proves" their claims ?

It is very easy to provide false lab analysis from the cores and virtually anything else that helps their cause.

Is there any independent individual amongst them, who is incorruptible and only seeks the truth ?
Or are they all, determined "Holocaustians" who would accomplish their mission by any means ?

Poor jerk. His presumably self-projecting paranoia suggests that Jonathan Harrison was right in the prediction he made in his post # 2157 on the RODOH forum:

Significantly, Gerdes and Hargis are already moving the goalposts. Whereas previously their gambit was "there are no photos", their new gambit is "how do we know that this black ash came from the excavation area and was not brought in from elsewhere?" That's the game they'll play throughout this process. The threshold of proof will be lifted higher and higher and increasingly absurd conspiracy theories will be offered as to how the evidence was produced - "the bone fragments were brought in from another site" or "Sobibor had a mass typhus outbreak and the allies destroyed the documents that describe the epidemic" or "the remains are really German troops that were killed by partisans".

Archaelogical Research at Chelmno

Further to the latest update of the "nafcash challenge" series, I would like to point out the website of the Museum of the former Extermination Camp in Chełmno-on-Ner, which includes an article about archaeological research by Łucja Pawlicka Nowak - a "must read" for anyone interested in archaeological investigations at former Nazi extermination camps.

Read more!


Some excerpts from that article:

The first grave.
[...]The grave has an irregular shape; the width of the northern part can be established at 8 m and narrows by 3 meters towards the south. Its length equals 62 m. More or less in the middle, it is cut by a concrete road of the period between 1962 and 1964. Its irregular shape and relatively insignificant length in comparison with the other graves indicate that the grave was dug by hand.[...]While uncovering the grave we noticed that the earth must have contained some active substances: protective rubber gloves became destroyed.
Collected earth samples were examined by the Karol Marcinkowski University of Medical Sciences in Poznań, Department of Forensic Medicine. Caustic substances in the grave may provide evidence for experiments connected with liquidation of corpses. The special unit (Sonderkommando) under the command of SS Hauptsturmführer Herbert Lange, which in autumn 1941 in the Kazimierz Forest near Konin killed an undetermined group of victims by boiling them alive in pits filled with quicklime, was later transferred to the center in Chełmno at that time being established. It seems very likely that the attempts to liquidate the corpses with the use of lime were shifted to Chełmno. This method apparently did not prove successful with a significant number of bodies. In the cemetery thus far we have not come across another such place where the earth would contain active chemical substances.[...]

The second grave, so-called "włocławska"
[...]Situated about 20 m east of the old forest track, the grave runs parallel to it. Its current length is marked with a stone wall and equals 185 m. In order to establish its actual run, transverse probes were put up, while in inaccessible places drills were made.
On the basis of the drills made, it was possible to state that the clearing where the grave is situated was originally longer: it stretched over 45 m further south. The grave had an irregular width, ranging from about 7 m in the southeastern part, through about 10 m in the middle part, to only 4 m in the northeastern edge. While the new layout was being uncovered, the existence of burned-out objects and ashes as well as crushed human bones both burned and unburned was stated.[...]

The third grave.
Located parallel to the forest wall. On the basis of probing surveys and drills, it was stated that it reaches the forest from the south (SE), insignificantly entering its area. It passes under the forest track, which during the war most likely in this part of the clearing ran along the then forest wall, situated further on than the present one. A stone wall (about 135 meters long), which was to determine the stretch of the grave, is narrower by 2 m than the actual width of the grave. Its total length equals 174 m, width about 8 m. The contents of the grave includes sandy soil with gravel, burn waste, ash, and crushed human bones.

The fourth grave.
It is represented by a 140-metre-long wall. Located between the third and the fifth graves; its presumed location does not correspond with the actual location. The fundamental fourth grave is located between the wall of the fourth non-existent grave and covers the whole fifth grave. Its actual width equals 10 m, while its length is 182 m. It is filled with gray sandy soil mixed with inclusions of burn waste, ash and crushed bones.

The fifth grave
The last grave, or rather a line of pits filled with ashes, was not commemorated with any walls; in the 1960s it was already not discernible on the surface. On the basis of the description by Judge W. Bednarz it appears that in 1945 the pits were examined by him.
The total length of these pits equals 161 m. The stretch is made up of 11 pits, each located about 2-3 m from another. The dimensions of the pits vary from 9x7.5 m to 15.50x8.50 m. They are filled with gray soil with a significant mixture of burn waste and crushed human bones. In the southern (SE) part of the grave the bones found in the pits used to be ground; those in further parts - crushed. According to W. Bednarz, the depth of the pits was about 4 m, and the width 8-10 m. Even now the flora on the pits is more luxuriant, making this stretch more visible on the surface.

"Muehlenkamp accepts nafcash's challenge" - 7th Update

Original article and 1st update

2nd update, 24.07.2008, 23:55 hours GMT

3rd update, 26.07.2008, 15:08 hours GMT

4th update 29.07.2008, 15:00 hours GMT

5th update, 30.07.2008, 23:59 GMT

6th update, 03.08.2008, 0:48 GMT

Update, 27.08.2008, 23:34 GMT

The question I asked in my previous update – whether Gerdes would make anything of the tasks I gave him in my VNN post # 955 during my holiday absence – is answered in my VNN post # 1011, in which I reminded Gerdes of what he should have done, while I was on vacation, in order to look a little bit less like the cowardly and obnoxious liar he has shown himself to be throughout our discussions.

Of course I didn’t expect him to do anything, and he lived up to my expectations.

Read more!


On the Cesspit thread Muehlenkamp accepts nafcash's challenge, no links to this series or to the VNN thread were posted, and neither did Gerdes forward my invitation to Jonni "Hannover" Hargis to step out of his warm and cozy Führerbunker into open debate.

Instead Gerdes and some fellow retards mouthed off on page 3 about websites related to archaeological work at Sobibor, their deplorable "arguments" saying much about themselves but little else, as usual.

The highlight of this exercise in "Revisionist" intellectual brilliance was Gerdes’ post of Tue Aug 19, 2008 11:55 am, in which he argued that there's a contradiction between a website's referring "ash fields" at Sobibor and Prof. Kola’s description of the contents of the mass graves he found at Sobibor in 2001 as "charred human remains". I already addressed the poor reasoning underlying such argument in the 3rd update , where I pointed out that

Even if some of the bodies were not reduced to mere ashes and bone fragments, the incineration of the bodies on grids at Sobibor must have produced lots of such smaller remains, and it stands to reason that these were not left lying around and neither necessarily taken somewhere to be scattered, but returned to the mass graves together with the incompletely burned remains that are suggested by the term "charred human remains" – assuming this is a correct translation of what Prof. Kola told the Polish news agency in Polish language.

.

In his post of Mon Aug 25, 2008 2:43 pm, the obnoxious hysteric (whose imitating my references to his tiny brain suggests that I hit a raw nerve there) let fly as follows:

Hello everyone, I just had to share this latest bit of priceless keyboard claptrap that just spewed out of Muehlenkamp's tiny brain:

RM (via the VNN forum):

"As I learned from Yoram Haimi of the Sobibor Archaeological Project, the reason why Prof. Kola has not yet published a detailed and illustrated report about his 2001 findings is that he wasn’t paid by the Polish government entity that commissioned his work in 2001. So Prof. Kola is sitting on his findings, so to say, until this problem is solved."

I honestly can't stop laughing at that one.

It's been 7 years and the holocaust industry can't come up with the spare change to pay Kola?

LOL!!!

Priceless.

The obvious conclusion from Prof. Kola’s funding problems – that a "holocaust industry", in the sense of a powerful monolithic organization promoting the memory of the Holocaust for ulterior purposes, only exists in "Revisionist" conspiracy fantasies – was obviously beyond a fanatical adherent to such fantasies.

Yet his "spare change" remark shows that even a cretin like Gerdes can to a certain extent be useful other than as a demonstration object of "Revisionist" imbecility (in which respect he is priceless), for he points to an issue that I consider worth addressing: funding problems facing endeavors to use archaeology as a means of expanding and conveying historical knowledge about the Nazi extermination camps.

Prof. Kola’s work at Sobibor is not the only case of such problems:

The Government Agency that supervises wartime cemeteries and monuments in Poland also finances the excavations at Chelmno, which cost about $ 17,500 a year. The country faces a large budget deficit, however, and additional funds that would allow Nowak to realize her plans of opening a museum, visitors’ center, and learning center on the palace grounds are in short supply. For now, some of the objects found at Chelmno are on display in an austere, one-room makeshift museum on the site.

The above quote is from the article "Remembering Chelmno", by Juliet Golden, which appeared in the January/February 2003 edition of Archaeology magazine. This article describes the work that has been done on the site of Chelmno extermination camp since the late 1980s by Lucja Nowak, director of the Konin Regional Museum. Mrs. Nowak’s findings, as the article points out, "have led to a more complete version of the camp’s history than the existing handful of eyewitness accounts provide".

Although it fails to take into account the documentary evidence that has also been helpful in reconstructing the mass murder at Chelmno, this statement expresses the importance of archaeological work on the site of the Nazi extermination camps.

To be sure, such work is not necessary to prove that mass murder on an enormous scale happened at these places – that has long been proven beyond a reasonable doubt on hand of documentary and eyewitness evidence (the latter including depositions from some of those who did the killing), assessed by historians and at various murder trials before West German courts. At the trial against Heinrich B. et al, for instance, the District Court of Bonn, Germany, managed to reconstruct, on hand of documentary evidence, the deportation to Chelmno of about 152,000 people, and established this as being the minimum number of that camp's victims. A translation of excerpts from the court's judgment can be found on the RODOH thread Number of Victims of Chelmno Extermination Camp.

However, archaeological finds can, apart from providing detail information that documentary and eyewitness evidence alone do not provide, make more "palpable" what becomes apparent from such evidence. The above-mentioned article from Archaeology magazine illustrates this by describing what archaeologists have achieved at Chelmno, even with the modest means at their disposal:

Vast amounts of property plundered by the Nazis have been uncovered. "It’s a little strange, but with every movement of the shovel you unearth dozens of objects," says Przymyslaw Gaj, a 26-year-old archaeology student. "You find as many things here in one day as you would normally find in an entire season in the usual dig." The meticulous segregation of goods adds to the surreal nature of the excavation. In one place archaeologists uncovered a thick layer of medicine bottles, followed by a layer of eating utensils. Another pit was filled with combs. Archaeologists have also dug up thousands of dental bridges and false teeth picked over to recover precious metal used in dental work.
There is obviously an emotional dimension to the work at Chelmno that is seldom encountered in archaeology. Small fragments of bone catch the sunlight at the forest site where the crematories once stood. "It’s one thing to hear about the crematory, it’s another to stand inside an enormous pit that is filled with human bones," says Krzysztof Gorczyca, an archaeologist who directed last summer’s excavation. "Only then did it occur to me just how many people were murdered here."
Many of the recovered objects speak volumes about how victims lived in the weeks and months before they arrived at Chelmno. In a pit of goods looted from victims brought in from the Lodz ghetto, two brooches, crudely fashioned from wire, bear the names of Bela and Irka. Other relics give names of victims or their hometowns and reveal their hobbies or passions. Hundreds of medicine bottles found in a single pit originated in Germany, Luxembourg and Czechoslovakia. A charm bearing the image of a tombstone gives a family name and the burial location in a Jewish cemetery in what was once the German city of Breslau, now Wroclaw. Josef Jakubowski carried a cigarette case he won in a 1936 edition of the "Gordon-Bennet" motorcycle race.

The article further points out that

Jewish leaders have praised Nowak’s scrupulous approach to her work. "The research at Chelmno is carried out with the absolute agreement and cooperation of the Jewish community," says Simcha Keller, head of the Jewish community in Lodz. "Dr. Nowak is a guarantor that the work is done with complete respect." Human remains found during the excavations are interred in a Jewish cemetery established in the forest. The burial ceremonies are attended by Jews from around the world.

Yet Dr. Nowak and other archaeologists, like the members of the Sobibor Archaeology Project, need more than praise and symbolic encouragement. They shouldn't have to struggle for the funds they need in order to do their difficult and valuable work of documenting the physical evidence lying in the ground of places like Chelmno and Sobibor. For what they are doing is far more important and useful than, for instance, the setting up of symbolic monuments, on which a lot of money is spent. The Stelenfeld monument in Berlin, for instance, cost the enormous amount of 27.6 million Euros of German taxpayer’s money – spent on 2,711 concrete blocks, the "message" of which somehow escapes me.

The Polish government may be broke, but couldn't, say, the German government invest a fraction of what it spent on the Stelenfeld in projects that matter? Just an idea ...


8th update, 09.09.2008, 12:19 GMT

"Muehlenkamp accepts nafcash's challenge" - 6th Update

Original article and 1st update

2nd update, 24.07.2008, 23:55 hours GMT

3rd update, 26.07.2008, 15:08 hours GMT

4th update 29.07.2008, 15:00 hours GMT

5th update, 30.07.2008, 23:59 GMT

Update, 03.08.2008, 0:48 GMT

The latest conversations between cowardly cretins Gerdes and Hargis on the CODOH Cesspit have been commented in my VNN post # 953.

See also my VNN posts # 954 and # 955.

The last of these posts contains a list of things for Gerdes to do – if he is interested in making good for the cowardly and obnoxious behavior he has displayed throughout our discussions, I’m just giving him a chance to do so –
during my holiday absence.

Let’s see how much of this, if anything, is done when I come back in three weeks.


7th update, 27.08.2008, 23:34 GMT