Talk:Jankiel Wiernik

message: Please site references 211.27.42.137 02:15, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: request

message: consider some of the excerpts from this "book", 
"One of them, Ivan, was tall, had and gentle eyes, but was, nevertheless, a sadist. He often attacked us while we worked and nailed our ears to the wall" 
"A German named Zopf was a vile a savage beast, who took special delight in abusing children. When he pushed women around and they begged him to desist because of the children, he frequently snatched a child out of a woman's arms and tore it in half" 
"It turned out that women burned easier than men. Accordingly, corpses of women were used as kindling for the fires." 
:It seems to me this sentence adds credibility to the account. "It is well established that women generally have a higher percentage of body fat than men" so their bodies would be more combustible. The author however, might not be expected to know about gender differences in body fat hence the "it turned out." The text also mentions that benzine was used a combustant and that the bodies were "soaked in gasoline", and that the male bodies did not burn even in that case. That the bodies of women burn with force enough to set fire to other (male) bodies once set alight, with benzine and or gasoline, and thus functioned as "kindling" in the cremation process, does not seem unreasonable, though of course, tragic and grotesque.--Timtak (talk) 03:18, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: you would have a point if Yankel Wiernik is the only survivor and testimony of what went on in Treblinka. Good thing he isnt, and funny enough, most historians barely give him a mention. As usual, deniers obsess over Wiernik just like they obsess over Zisblatt, Rosenblat, Hirt, Defonesca and others who historians havent even heard about.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8388:502:3D80:744C:57C7:1A6A:B620 (talk) 23:18, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zionist Propaganda 

message: i read that this book is used as a reference by many other books of the Holocaust. why? the way it is written it is obviously lacking much needed credibility. that the SS guards had "satanic smiles" on their faces? does that sound like history or propaganda? would SS guards be allowed to drink while on duty? would you really want to eat while dead bodies burned? the smell of burning flesh makes you want to eat?
we need some better critisizm of this book. and amazon.com doesnt even have this book.Bannedtruth (talk) 10:33, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Considering that the author suffered abuse at the hands of the people being described, I think it's understandable that he might see a smile on the face of a guard there to be satanic.  Since he was there and we were not, it's his prerogative (yes, this is how its spelled BTW) to describe his own experiences using whatever terms he feels appropriate.  That's the nature of memoirs. If you feel he's making it all up, there are plenty of other eyewitness testimonies to consult.  The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles would be a good place to begin.   Their library and archives are open to students and researchers.LiPollis (talk) 22:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

text: *We have a policy against the use of loaded language for shock value. Loaded language in your cherry-picked quotations User:Bdell555 does not serve the purposes of Wiernik's biography. One of our principles of editing from a neutral point of view is:  "If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as  direct statements  ." Poeticbent talk 02:34, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: We have a policy of covering what's NOTABLE.  His most notable remarks are not rendered less notable simply by virtue of some finding them "shocking."  What you call "cherry-picking" I call what distinguishes Wiernik from other sources and what has made Wiernik a discussion point elsewhere.  If that "elsewhere" is the exclusive preserve of tabloids and shock sites, I would acknowledge your point, but that's not the case here.  Not presenting Wiernik's statements as direct statements is exactly what has been done here, as the claims are clearly presented as "according to Wiernik" as opposed to "fact.... fact.... fact..." (e.g. "the sky is blue (direct statement) and such-and-such happened to Wiernik (direct statement))".  I'll add that if there's consistency issues with respect to Wiernik's account, it's largely in consistency with the reasonable person's everyday experience, not "he said/she said" conflicting narratives.  This is why the neutral point of view here calls for laying out Wiernik's claims for the reader with particular emphasis on the claims that other sources have expressed the most doubt about.  If you want to contend that the tone suggested by the quotes is not reflective of the tone found in the source (his book) or otherwise inconsistent with the general impression on the reader created by the source, you are free to advance that argument.  I happen to think that rendering Wiernik's account more dryly or scholarly would be to misrepresent it; - Wiernik did not publish his account in a refereed academic journal.--Brian Dell (talk) 03:26, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

text: I appreciate your desire to give the reading public an opportunity to make sense of Wiernik's post-Holocaust writings, but this is not the way to do it. Wiernik was not alone and certainly, not the most controversial. His inability to calmly recall the actual events of the past due to psychological trauma is what needs to be mentioned and properly referenced. All survivors suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting in demonic fantasies with no grounds in reality. Grinberg, having arrived well after the fact, spoke about concrete identities and motives of the killers; Srebnik repeated conversations between executioners taking place in far-away locations and gave minute descriptions of traumatic events he did not participate in. Providing quotes from memoirs that sound like tall-tales, without third-party reliable commentary is the difference between loaded language (mentioned above) and the scholarly narrative still lacking in our biography. By the same token, deficits in memory experienced by soldiers returning from combat cannot be blamed on the lack of explicit procedural knowledge. Poeticbent talk 00:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You are free to add material suggesting to the reader that "His inability to calmly recall the actual events of the past [was] due to psychological trauma" if this may be added in a way consistent with Wikipedia policies.  What is "not the way", however, is to have Wikipedia rewrite the material to "calm."--Brian Dell (talk) 03:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  a most cited source