HOW LEGITIMATE IS THE LIST OF “HOLOCAUST” (SHOAH) VICTIMS AT THE YAD VASHEM WEBSITE?
15 September 2005

By Stephen Kaposi

Yad Vashem is the “Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance authority” and was established in 1953 by the Israeli parliament. It perpetuates the official Holocaust story by saying that the “Nazis and their accomplices murdered six million Jews” and it claims to have collected the names of 3.2 million of these victims. However, even a cursory review of the database of names raises serious questions about its veracity and legitimacy. Furthermore, the vast “six million” number has been increasingly undermined and questioned by continuing authoritative research. For example, the steadily declining number of victims of the principal German “death camp” at Auschwitz can be discussed to illustrate this point.

William L. Shirer refers to an early figure of “7 125 000” killed out of “7 820 000” inmates as being “undoubtedly too high”.[1] Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, “confessed” under torture to “three million” deaths there but later reduced the figure to a third of that number. The Soviets claimed four million were killed there and this number, presented at Nuremberg, conveniently became the number quoted on the memorial plaque on display at Auschwitz until 1989. Thereafter, based on a groundswell of new research, a new plaque referring to “one a half million” was placed on display to replace the original. Gerald Reitlinger, as early as 1953 in his book The Final Solution, stated 600 000 were gassed at Auschwitz. Reitlinger’s research was much more accurate than the boldest Jewish claims, but even his number was exaggerated, as revealed as recently as May 2002 when a thorough report concluded that between 300 000 – 500 000 died there.

Another important distinction is whether inmates died as opposed to being purposefully “murdered” or “gassed”. It is quite possible that a large proportion of deaths in concentration camps were due to either typhus epidemics, which the Zyklon B pesticide was employed to control, or from the tragic deterioration in conditions that occurred in the camps in the last chaotic months of the war. Even the situation in the Dachau concentration camp undermines the accepted numbers as the death toll there has dropped from a huge and unlikely 238 000 in 1946 to the current 20 600. These deaths were again mostly from disease outbreaks and the chaotic last few months of the war brought about by Allied bombing that destroyed Germany’s transportation network and the pressures of invading armies, producing those infamous pictures of emaciated bodies.

Indeed, a recent Reuters report from July 2005 unwittingly provides two pieces of evidence that undermine the standard version of events. First, the article confirms that the modern (for the time) crematoria supplied to the SS were designed to be “smoke and odor free”. This totally contradicts “eye-witness” accounts that speak of “thick, black smoke” billowing from chimneys. Smoke produced by cremations was almost logically assumed to be the case, hence its apparent presence in “eye-witness” accounts. Even the Simon Wiesenthal Center maintained a photo of Auschwitz on its website that was faked to include a non-existent pall of ominous billowing smoke: they wouldn’t need to fake a photo if one existed. Second, the Reuters report confirms that the crematoria were ordered (at least for Buchenwald camp) “after an epidemic killed hundreds of prisoners”. Emphasis must be placed here on epidemic, not outright “murdering” or “gassing”: the true purpose of the crematoria is therefore revealed.

However, despite this enormous decline in the Auschwitz death toll, the “six million” figure is still supposed to be accepted as the official death toll of the Holocaust, and herein lays the problem with the database of victims maintained by Yad Vashem. For this site claims matter-of-factly that “six million” were killed, although the number seemingly has no relationship to the significant revisions of the number of Jews who died in German hands. Additionally, the six million figure was put forward by the prosecutors at the Nuremberg war crimes trials (after apparently being informed of the number by Jewish interests), which meant it immediately became accepted history and fact. Furthermore, the six million number was based on those earliest, unrealistically massive numbers of killings, which as mentioned, have all since been significantly revised downwards.

When the Washington Post reported on the database in 2004 it stated it would “eventually…document most of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust”. Apart from the aforementioned problems concerning the number of Jews who actually died, this shows how the mainstream media has accepted the official figure, thus entrenching it further, while not really relying on firm evidence. It is rather like how the media blindly passed on the government’s false and thoroughly discredited “weapon of mass destruction” claims as if they were confirmed facts.

As mentioned earlier, there are a number of serious questions regarding the Yad Vashem database of names. Firstly, how can we be sure that some names haven’t been repeated? The same name, often with many spelling variations, appears many times, with often only minor details, such as the place of birth, varying. The way the people died is never mentioned, nor crucially is the place of death. Do we assume they were they all “murdered” by the evil Nazis? Why couldn’t some have died either of natural causes; in Allied bombing; in general warfare; of disease outbreaks; or other causes unrelated to a systematic “genocide” of the Jewish race?

Take the example of a 5-year old who is listed as having died in February 1940 in Silesia, Poland. 5-year old children do unfortunately die even at the present time from many natural causes and childhood diseases were certainly more prevalent back then. The same can be said of a 74-year old who is listed as having died in 1940: elderly people do die. What about some other anomalies? One submitter is stated as being the “grandfather” of a 63-year old who died. The “father” would have been at an advanced age, but the grandfather, making the submission sometime after the war, was certainly a spritely fellow. An 18-year old apparently died in Russia in 1934: the marauding Nazis were nowhere near there at that time.

The source for the names in the database are “Pages of Testimony” that have been submitted by family members, which consists of a standard single page form that can seemingly be submitted by anyone with apparently the barest of evidence. It is not known whether any checking is carried out into the submitted “Pages of Testimony” to authenticate them, but I hazard to guess it is minimal.[2] This author believes that a fake name could be submitted and accepted as long as the submission is authentic-looking enough.

In conclusion, it is contended that every possible name of a Jewish person who died (as opposed to “murdered” or “gassed”) in Europe during the six years of World War Two is being submitted to Yad Vashem to form its database of “Holocaust” victims. To put it another way, out of millions of people killed by conventional warfare and disease during the war, a certain percentage at least would automatically have been Jewish. Therefore, it is quite possible that these names, regardless of their manner of death, are being presented very broadly as victims of Nazi murder and “genocide”. If this is the case, and the manner of death is not being distinguished, then the database is undoubtedly bogus and misleading.


Endnotes:


1 William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p.967 (1991 edition)
2 Admittedly it could be difficult to carry out such checking: hence a further problem