Wednesday, September 03, 2008

A classic example of “brilliant” Gerdian reasoning …

... can be found in his post of Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:42 am on the CODOH thread NAFCASH throws Dullenkamp a bone.

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Responding to his fellow cretin "KostasL" (see this article), Gerdes heavy-handedly claims that the evidence to mass murder at Belzec extermination camp is "falsified":

Because falsified evidence isn't proof. Only proof is proof.

Look at Belzec for example. That is falsified evidence.


What could be behind this bold assertion?

Could it be that Gerdes found proof that all eyewitnesses describing mass murder at Belzec, including but not limited to those mentioned in my VNN post # 777, we coerced or otherwise induced by some sinister conspiratorial entity into telling fictitious horror tales?

Could it be that he found proof that the documentary evidence showing the extermination camp character of Belzec, including but not limited to the exhibits listed in the same post, was all manipulated by evil-minded fakers working for that sinister conspiratorial entity?

Could it be that he found proof that investigation reports describing the physical evidence, namely those referred to in my above-mentioned post, were made up by corrupt criminal investigators or archaeologists in the service of the same mysterious entity?

Could it be that he found an evidence-backed alternative explanation regarding the fate of the 434,508 people proven by documentary evidence to have been deported to Belzec?

No, folks, none of that. He concludes that the Belzec evidence is "falsified" from, believe it or not, the absence of response to his sick and fraudulent "challenge" (you know, the one that promises a money reward for proving the "exact" location of a mass grave and that this mass grave contains a certain amount of human remains,

• without specifying what would be accepted as proof or how an application to the reward will be processed,
• restricting a potential applicant's publication choices to one single magazine, and
• not informing a potential applicant that, should he provide the required evidence (assuming that is possible, given a presumably a posteriori definition of requirements), he will have to run after 21 characterless charlatans (that’s the number of challenge supporters including Gerdes, according to Gerdes himself) for the part of the reward money to which each of them has allegedly committed – see my VNN post # 903).

No kidding, that’s the fellow’s reasoning:

They had 2 years to use that falsified evidence to lay claim to THE FINAL SOLUTION FORENSIC CHALLENGE and they didn't even dare.


Infantile as this flagrant non sequitur is, it is also somewhat dishonest. For Gerdes fails to mention that Belzec was excluded from the "challenge" soon after someone stated his acceptance thereof (see my VNN post # 827, in which I pointed out this and other changes obviously meant to shift the goalposts).

This takes us to the next claim in Gerdes’ CODOH post of Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:42 am:

I even directly challenged the dull one himself to prove that belzecs alleged huge mass grave #10 contained 1% of the alleged mass murder at Belzec, (6,000), and he couldn't do it and back peddled like crazy and changed the subject.


Whoever has followed my discussions with Gerdes on VNN and on Topix is probably wondering what the fellow – who has amply shown to be a compulsive liar – could possibly be talking about. Maybe he’s referring to my Topix post # 708. Or then he means my VNN post # 506, in which I proposed a specification of the NAFCASH challenge's "1 %" requirement and of the evidence whereby that requirement might be met, as follows:

Human remains in the mass graves at the extermination camps Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, are reported to exist in the following forms, in all or some of these places:

i) Human ashes and bone fragments
ii) Human skulls, bones and teeth
iii) Semi-decomposed human bodies or parts of human bodies in a state of wax-fat transformation.

Quantification of the remains, and the methodology for reaching conclusions about the number of human bodies they belong to, depends on the type of human remains found.

Human skulls and semi-decomposed bodies in a state of wax-fat transformation need only be counted to establish the number of human bodies they belong to.

Bones and teeth can be separated, insofar as their type can be identified clearly enough, into sets corresponding to the amount of a given type of bone or tooth that a human being has [for example, an adult has x number of incisor teeth, x number of molar teeth, x number of shinbones, elbows, shoulder blades, etc.]. Precise conclusions about the number of bodies that bones or teeth found belonged to can, therefore, to a certain extent be reached.

Ashes and smaller bone fragments, on the other hand, are difficult to quantify, especially as the desciptions of human remains in Kola’s Belzec book and in reports about postwar Polish site investigations conducted at Belzec and Treblinka show that they are often mixed with wood ashes and/or soil. As concerns these remains – which, according to the known evidence, are what the greatest part of the body mass in the extermination camp’s mass graves was reduced to – only estimates are therefore possible. Such estimates can be made in two steps:

Step One: estimating, through assessment of a reasonable number of samples taken from a given mass of ashes/bone fragments mixed with wood ash and/or soil that was excavated from a mass grave, what the proportion of human remains in this mass is likely to be.

Step Two: estimating, under consideration of what is known from evidence about the cremation process and about the age and sex composition of the deportees to the extermination camp in question, to how many human beings the human ashes estimated in Step One may correspond. In section 4.1 of my article Carlo Mattogno on Belzec Archeological Research, see under http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/05/carlo-mattogno-on-belzec_30.html , I estimated, based on data from burning experiments provided by Mattogno, that 434,000 dead bodies of deportees to Belzec, with an estimated total live or pre-cremation weight of 15,190,000 kg [many children] would leave behind 759.5 tons or 1,519 cubic meters of ashes. This calculation can be done in reverse: for instance, if an ash-soil layer of 500 cubic meters is extracted from a given mass grave and sampling [Step One] suggests that half of this layer [= 250 cubic meters] are ashes, this volume corresponds [according to Mattogno’s experimental data] to 250 x 0.5 = 125 tons of ashes, and this weight corresponds to 125 ÷ 0.05 = 2,500 tons or 2,500,000 kgs of live weight or pre-cremation corpse weight. Assuming a realistic average of 35 kg per person, this would correspond to ca. 71,000 bodies. Assuming [as Mattogno does] a less realistic average of 45 kg per person, this would correspond to ca. 56,000 dead bodies.

The documentation required and accepted as proof of the exact dimensions, for the purposes of the NAFCASH challenge, is the following:

- An archeologist’s, anthropologist’s or forensic expert’s description of the quantification process and the result reached regarding the various quantities and types of remains assessed;

- Where the number of dead bodies does not immediately follow from the number of quantified remains [it does in what concerns whole bodies in a state of wax-fat transformation and skulls, it does not in what concerns bones, teeth and especially ashes and bone fragments], an archeologist’s, anthropologist’s or forensic expert’s substantiated calculation of the number of human bodies these remains may have belonged to, applying the methodologies described above or other methodologies that are at least equally suitable;

- In what concerns human ashes and bone fragments, a forensic expert’s assessment of a reasonable number of samples certifying that the remains are in fact of human origin;

- Photographs or video recordings illustrating the remains assessed and the assessment process. «Illustrating» means that the photographs or video recordings help a reader of the pertinent reports to better visualize and imagine the descriptions contained in such reports, not that the photographs or video recordings must show all or even a substantial part of the human remains assessed or of the assessment procedure.


Gerdes’ response to this suggestion, which was repeated in several posts thereafter, is summarized in my VNN post # 903:

Readers will further remember Gerdes’ persistent refusal to define more precisely the requirements of the NAFCASH challenge and to state what exactly he would accept as proof meeting those requirements, even though I made it real easy for him by providing a draft of such specification and asking him to modify it as he considered necessary (see my posts # 506 under http://206.41.117.128/showpost.php?p=804082&postcount=506 , # 528 under http://206.41.117.128/showpost.php?p=804176&postcount=528 , # 536 under http://206.41.117.128/showpost.php?p=804206&postcount=536 , # 540 under http://206.41.117.128/showpost.php?p=804216&postcount=540, # 545 under http://206.41.117.128/showpost.php?p=804233&postcount=545 , # 566 under http://206.41.117.128/showpost.php?p=804527&postcount=566 , among others) . The staple reply to my suggestion was the idiotic "what part of proof do you not understand?" – rhetoric. Asked if this meant submission to reasonable standards of proof such as applied in criminal investigation and historical research, Gerdes ignored the question.


Gerdes may explain how I could have "back peddled like crazy" when he persistently refused to state what he would accept as proof that a given mass grave presently contains human remains corresponding to at least 1 % of the estimated number of victims of the respective extermination camp.

Next in his CODOH post Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:42 am:

Take a look at the - Gerdes pledges to pay Kola's Sobibor bill - and see for yourself how afraid they are of even trying such a stunt.


Take a look at the blog articles Who thought that Gerdian imbecility can’t get any worse ... and Desperately yelping for the attention ... for my assessment of Gerdes'pitiable publicity stunts on the thread Gerdes pledges to pay Kola's Sobibor bill. How about giving the CODOH clowns the links to these articles, Mr. Gerdes?

Last but not least, we have another Gerdian classic:

Remember KostasL, after 65 years, it has yet to be proven that a single alleged "huge mass grave" contains so much as 1% of the alleged mass murder at Babi Yar, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor or Treblinka.

Not one camp - not one mass grave - not one percent.


Babi Yar, amply discussed in this blog’s That's why it is denial, not revisionism series, has not yet been the subject of my conversations with Gerdes.

As to Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka, it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, by evidence including but not limited to the evidence mentioned in my VNN posts # 777 and # 1040, that there are mass graves at these places corresponding to the magnitude of the mass killing that becomes apparent from all known evidence.

So it’s perfectly irrelevant how many human remains each of these mass graves contains and even how many mass graves there are and in what part of the former camp area they are located, though the latter has been established by archaeological research in regard to all camps except Treblinka.

And where the location and dimensions of mass graves have been precisely established – as is the case at Belzec and Chelmno – it is also relatively easy, if reasonable standards are applied, to provide proof of their contents in the form of evidence-backed, sustainable estimates, as I have demonstrated in my article Desperately yelping for the attention ... .

Gerdes may be aware of this, judging by his having excluded Belzec and Chelmno from the NAFCASH challenge, which is now restricted to Sobibor and Treblinka. Why else would he have thus weakened the NAFCASH publicity stunt?

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