Our greatest taboo should be permitted for investigation and debate

== Rebuttal == Nuremberg My opponent's source never says Hoess' family was threatened with death by the British. It mentions that they were monitored because in the last days of the war, Himmler told Hoess to disguise himself among German navy personnel. He evaded arrest for almost a year. His family needed to be monitored in case he tried to contact them. Hoess undoubtedly knew that he would be sentenced to death, given that 12 prominent Nazis had already been hanged on October 16, 1946. Hoess also expressed regret for his war crimes 4 days before his hanging. [1] After he was sentenced to death, he could have easily recanted his testimony. There was nothing "worse than death" that they could have done to him. Instead, he chose to apologize for his crimes. "May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done." [1] Justice Wennerstrum presided over some trials, although Francis Biddle was the main American judge at Nuremberg. Wennerstrum's criticism is supposedly that he found a few former European Jews among a staff of thousands. This doesn't invalidate any perpetrator testimony. My opponent claims that if a Nazi denied the Holocaust, a Jewish interpreter would have somehow ensured he was put to death. That is absurd. Many Germans were acquitted at Nuremberg. [2] And 136 of the defense attorneys were members of the Nazi party. [3] If someone denied the Holocaust, the burden of proof would be on the prosecution to prove that that person was involved. Denial would have been a decent legal strategy, yet no one denied the Holocaust. My opponent still makes no attempt to refute anyone's testimony but Hoess'. Gas vans Gas vans have not been found because the Germans only had 12-16 in operation by the end of the war, at death camps like Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka, and Himmler ordered these destroyed. All these camps were razed to the ground and all evidence from them was burned or buried. There was a massive attempt by the Nazis to cover up evidence of their crimes. The words "van" and "truck" are synonymous. I had no nefarious purposes in using the word truck, except to point out that anything larger than a "light truck" uses diesel because diesel fuel has a higher compression ratio. Given the number of Jews that the Germans fit in the back of the trucks, the trucks were undoubtedly heavy enough that they would have had to use a diesel engine for fuel efficiency. Mass graves Jewish law has very strong rules about respecting the dead. There were even questions about whether the Jewish dead could be exhumed in order to be given proper burials. [4] "Rabbi Weinberg proceeds to cite a number of statements in Chazal which compare desecration or humiliation of the dead to a form of murder." [4] Mass graves have not been dug up and subjected to forensic analysis out of respect for Jewish law. My opponent's CIA source says that the Soviets used brush strokes to hide details about their weapons, and they staged fake battles in order to be seen in a more favorable light. It never says that they fabricated a story about the Holocaust during WWII. My opponent shouldn't be surprised that propaganda existed. Even the US employed propaganda during this time period, e.g. http://tinyurl.com... Gas chambers According to Richard Green, who has a PhD in chemistry from Stanford, there are two main differences in methodology between the Rudolf/Leuchter "studies" and the Markiewicz et al study. The first difference is that Markiewicz got permission from the management of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum to remove samples, but neither Rudolf nor Leuchter received permission. [5] Markiewicz was able to obtain better quality samples than either Rudolf or Leuchter, considering the latter two had to sneak samples out illegally. [5] HCN also degrades when exposed to puddles of rain water, which is significant because Markiewicz was able to take large samples from the walls of the gas chambers, whereas Rudolf and Leuchter would have had to take loose bricks off the floor. [5] The second major failing is that Rudolf and Leuchter did not use control samples. My opponent is lying when he says that Markiewicz found comparable levels of HCN in the control samples. Green says of the study, "The results from their control samples were negative indicating that their results were meaningful." [5] Rudolf/Leuchter ultimately compared Prussian blue samples from the delousing facilities (where they already *knew* they would find significant traces of HCN) to samples from the gas chambers that were unlikely to show traces of HCN. As my opponent pointed out, HCN degrades in non-Prussian blue samples. Rudolf and Leuchter already knew what conclusion their studies would draw. It is also noteworthy that both were paid tens of thousands of dollars –in advance – to perform these studies in defense of Holocaust deniers who were on trial in Europe. [5] There were also two forensic analyses done right after the war. In 1945, Dr. Jan Z. Robel performed an analysis of scrapings from the 2 damaged ventilation orifices found in the ruins of Krematorium II, in which Robel established the presence of cyanide compounds. [5] Another analysis by the Institute of Judicial Expertise in Krakow – in 1945 – of hair samples and hair pins found on the dead at Auschwitz confirmed the presence of prussic acid, a basic component of Zyklon B. [5] In regards to evaporation time, "der groste Teil" translates to "almost all." [5] But it doesn't matter whether all the HCN was dissipated when the chamber was opened, as long as the Germans wore gas masks. The Jews waiting in line were isolated from viewing the gas chamber exits, so it's unclear whether they could have smelled the gas. Regardless, HCN only has a *faint* almond smell, which could easily be misidentified as soap. My opponent asks how a few guards could have handled thousands of prisoners, but that's how a prison works – a small number of people keep control over a much larger group of people. Jager No specific reason is given to doubt this source. Documentation My opponent's response is absurd. There are hundreds of millions of American documents that don't mention the Japanese internment and only a handful of documents that do. Does this prove that the Japanese internment didn't happen? Obviously not. It proves that governments generate a lot of paperwork. I already cited evidence showing that Himmler issued an order to destroy all evidence of genocide, including all paperwork both in the central government and in the camps. My opponent has no direct refutation to any of the documents I cited. Photos/videos O'Keefe was an undergrad history major at Harvard, not a professor. He was hired by IHR shortly after graduation. I provided testimony from Larson that a small number of the bodies he examined at Dachau died of gassing, which is consistent with what happened at Dachau: only a few experimental gassings. What really happened? As far as I can tell, Denier websites claim the Jews "declared war on Germany" with the Anti-Nazi Boycott of 1933, during which people in the US, UK, and elsewhere protested anti-Semitic rhetoric and practices begun in Nazi Germany during the rise of Hitler by boycotting German goods. My opponent's account doesn't explain the Jewish Ghettos or why Hitler refused to let Jews leave Europe. It doesn't explain concentration camps. My opponent claimed Hitler never starved the Jews, but this doesn't explain why they were found bone-thin. It's just not true that thousands of documents from Hitler show that he never wanted to kill the Jews. In a public speech in 1939, Hitler said, "If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe." My opponent's 300,000 figure is absurd. It flies in the face of the demographic estimates I already cited. Yad Vashem has identified the names and specific identities of 4 million victims. [6] I ask my opponent: what happened to all these people? [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com... [4] http://tinyurl.com... [5] http://tinyurl.com... [6] http://tinyurl.com...