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Old 11th March 2017, 11:40 AM   #2240
LemmyCaution
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Originally Posted by EtienneSC View Post
Here is a recent Germar Rudolf essay on the Aktion |Reinhard camps that in effect is a response to Eric Hunt's remarks on the subject on his questioningtheholocaust site:
One Single Survivor
In this piece, Rudolf made the following argument regarding Siegmund Rothstein, from Berlin: Rothstein
Quote:
was first deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto for elderly Jews in August 1942. Barely a month later, however, on September 26, he was deported to Treblinka at the age of 75. But that was not his end at all, because the German authorities found life signs of him further east, as they finally determined that Rothstein died in Minsk, the capital city of Belarus, some 240 miles (286 km) east of Treblinka. I doubt 75-year-old Mr. Rothstein jumped off the train prior to arriving at Treblinka and ran all the way to German-occupied Minsk, Hence, he must have traveled there by train. I also doubt that the German authorities reserved a train just for him or put just him on a military train going to Minsk. Rather, he must have made that journey on a deportation train together with hundreds or thousands of fellow deportees from Theresienstadt.
Can you help me follow this? I have to state upfront - see what follows - that Rudolf seems to be lying in this essay.

Are we sure that Rothstein ever went to Treblinka? Do we know where Rothstein perished? Rudolf’s first claim was that “memorial book” sources show that Rothstein was deported from Theresienstadt to Treblinka on 26 September. This is not accurate:

The sources on which Rudolf relies are contradictory and not definitive. Rudolf cites an essay by Boisdefu which makes use of 3 Yad Vashem records for Siegmund (Zigmund) Rothstein. I’ve been able to find four Yad Vashem has records for Rothstein, each based on a memorial-book type source. (Three of these records are the ones Boisdefu used.) Two of the records have Rothstein perishing in Minsk, two records have him dying in Treblinka:

- record #10760945 (based on the Yizkor book of the Kitzingen community with names and biographic data of Jews who perished during the Holocaust) has Rothstein deported not from Theresienstadt but from “Kitzingen, Kitzingen (Mainfranken), Bavaria” to Minsk, where he died - no date. Since we have a record (transport list of I/37 from Berlin to Theresienstadt of Rothstein being brought to Theresienstadt, this record is unlikely to be accurate. It makes no mention of Treblinka. (http://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetail...10760945&ind=0)

- record #4129032 (based on Memory Book of the Jewish Victims of National Socialism, Freie Universität Berlin, Central Institute for Social Science Research, Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1995) says that Rothstein was deported on transport I/37 from Berlin to Theresienstadt on I/37 on 4 August 1942, then perishing in Minsk, no date provided. (http://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetail...=4129032&ind=3)

- record #4911011 (based on Terezinska Pametni Kniha [Theresa's memorial book], Terezinska Iniciativa, vol. I-II Melantrich, Praha 1995, vol. III Academia Publishing House, Prague 2000 Memorial Book Theresienstadt, Terezin Initiative) has Rothstein deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt on I/37 on 4 August 1942, then from Therksienstadt to Treblinka on 26 September 1942. (http://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetail...=4911011&ind=4)

- record #11619891 (based on Victory of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933-1945 "prepared by the German Federal Archives”) has Rothstein deported to Theresienstadt (no transport #) on 4 August 1942 and from Theresienstadt to Treblinka on 26 September 1942). (http://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetail...11619891&ind=2)

Yad Vashem also has an online database of deportations (http://db.yadvashem.org/deportation/...ml?language=en) For transports from Theresienstadt to Treblinka, including the 26 September 1942 transport, lists of deportees are included. Rothstein’s name is not on any of these transport lists, to the best of my effort to find him (some of the names are out of alphabetical order but in three checks through the approximately 1000 names on this list I could not find Rothstein). So it appears that we cannot even “get” Rothstein to Treblinka. (Also, Rothstein’s name is not on the list of any transport from Theresienstadt to Minsk, again to the best of my effort.)

Can we sequence Rothstein's whereabouts - first Treblinka, then Minsk - based on the YV records? None of the YV records, nor the records viewed together, suggest that Rothstein went first from Theresienstadt to Treblinka, then from Treblinka to Minsk.

Record #10760945 has Rothstein going directly from Kitzingen to Minsk, bypassing Theresienstadt altogether. Neither of the two Treblinka records (#4911011 and #11619891) has any suggestion that Rothstein continued on to Minsk from Treblinka. Indeed, neither mentions Minsk at all. Both “Treblinka” records give a date for Rothstein’s transport from Theresienstadt to Treblinka (26 September 1942) but none of the Minsk records say when Rothstein arrived there (or when he left Theresienstadt).

There is no way from these 4 records to guess when Rothstein was supposed to have arrived in Minsk. Nor is there even a hint that Rothstein went to Treblinka before going to Minsk. All we have are 4 unverified records giving two different places people believe that Rothstein was taken and where he perished. How Rudolf was able to determine a sequence from these records (Treblinka, then Minsk) he did not state. Rather, he simply invented the sequence. One of the Minsk records is clearly inaccurate, as noted above, the second is sketchy by comparison to the two Treblinka records.

Again, Rudolf provided zero evidence whatsoever for any sequence of Rothstein’s whereabouts in fall 1942 - and, more importantly, failed to resolve to what destination Rothstein was taken from Theresienstadt. These failures didn’t stop Rudolf from pretentiously asserting a fully fabricated sequence of Rothstein’s deportations to support the Treblinka transit lie (“Treblinka as a transit station”).

Was there an official final determination, as Rudolf claimed, of where Rothstein perished? Rudolf also wrote that “the German authorities . . . finally determined that Rothstein died in Minsk.” This is not supported by what Rudolf presented in his essay. According to the records which Rudolf referenced (relying, as noted above, on a similarly dishonest essay by Boisdefu, which discussed 3 of the above YV memorial-book based records), we simply don’t know where Rothstein died: in Theresienstadt, at Treblinka, or in Minsk are all possible locations. Rudolf presented no evidence to clear up the differences among the records.

Must Rothstein have traveled by train to Minsk? Rudolf wrote also that Rothstein “must have traveled [to Minsk] by train.” Since we don’t know that Rothstein ever went to Minsk, the “must” is just more of Rudolf’s pretentious twaddle. Rudolf didn’t bother proposing any specific, sourced transport which “must have” taken Rothstein to Minsk.

Did 1000s of other deportees travel with Rothstein to Minsk? Rudolf’s falsehoods are not enough to prevent him from adding one more, the biggest of all: “[Rothstein] must have made that journey on a deportation train together with hundreds or thousands of fellow deportees from Theresienstadt.” So now, unable to say where Rothstein went and died, Rudolf adds 1000s of deportees taking the imaginary route he claims for Rothstein.

Rudolf expanded on this point as follows: “This case, too, indicates that thousands of Jews seem to have been deported to ‘the East’ with Treblinka as a transit station. As a result, Treblinka must indeed have had the logistics to temporarily house, feed and clean hundreds, if not thousands of individuals for short periods of time. Among other things, it most likely did have a very real shower facility for that very purpose. It is therefore clear that orthodox historians have to adjust their narrative to accommodate that role somehow. . . .” Since Rudolf fabricated Rothstein’s "stopover" in Treblinka, to fictionalize that the Treblinka camp was used as a "transit station,” the rest of what he writes here is balderdash, including his portentous “musts,” nothing but the fanciful piling of inanity on inanity.

Sorry, from what I see in this case it is advocates of the chimera of resettlement who have “adjustments” to make. Among these adjustments, for starters, is explaining why Rudolf felt free to fabricate Rothstein's necessary itinerary in an essay purporting to give an empirical account.
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