I'm just here for the inevitable popcorn.

lol, right. Could be interesting or just end up being a bunch of folks saluting the fuhrer.

It's times like these that I wish my grandfather had lived long enough to see the Internet and Reddit.

His AMA here would have been amazing.

He was a German immigrant who served in the US Army during WWII (and in fact had left Germany because of the Nazis in the late 1920s), fighting in Africa against Rommel, and then up through Italy, etc. He didn't even know if he was killing his own family members or not, and it was always something that bothered him.

Oh the stories he had about what he witnessed and did during that war would probably make your skin crawl.

And yes, there was a Holocaust. He also always said the Jewish numbers were inflated and the numbers of handicapped, Romany, gays, atheists, leftists, etc under-inflated. He said the total number may have been 6 million with ALL groups included, but was more likely closer to 3 or 4, and that we will simply never know because of the actions of Stalin and the Russian army during and after the war (Russia was quick to block any access whatsoever to camps in territory controlled by them, and many official documents from that period have never been allowed access to any scholars, etc outside of the Russian Politburo.)

For their part, the Waffen-SS was also extremely efficient in burning most of the documents containing any official tabulated numbers from the camps. What we have left is best guesstimates made by scholars and government researchers over the years based on only partial evidence.

Hmm, i hadn't considered the numbers of non-Jews being short changed.

one thing to remember: all those abominable, disgusting WW2 photos/films from concentration camps show dead people not dead jews - and most of them died from starvation & disease, not zyklon b...

p.s. david cole, norman finkelstein (both jews)

According to the medical records that have been released by Russia, there was a rampant typhus epidemic that started in spring of '42, maybe due to conditions at the camps, but more likely brought in by ghetto denizens. Within a few months, tens of thousands of inmates were dying of this horrific disease each month. They tried to get it under control by shaving the inmates heads to get rid of lice, and by delousing the clothing with Zyklon-B (this is where the "gas chamber" myth got started). But Allied bombing campaigns had destroyed German infrastructure to the point that medicines weren't readily available.

Typhus is a terrible disease, that causes vomiting and diarrhea, and the related high fever---108 degrees F is not uncommon---makes the person boil to death in their own skin over a period of 4-8 weeks. When you see pix of emaciated inmates, it's not because they were starved, it's because they were unable to keep food and water down. Typhus is much worse than the supposed gas chambers ever could have been.

One thing that he said that really stuck out in my mind was that you could read in the census from Germany and surrounding countries that there weren't anywhere close to 6M Jews

there were a little under 10 million Jews in Europe in 1933, so clearly this person you were talking to had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

He was denying the holocaust, and i maintained reason while trying to argue with him...he did too. Neither of us were sourcing, but we were having an intelligent conversation

Its more than okay to question the status quo, and question why history is written the way it is and even if it has been changed to fit an agenda. That being said, 'holocaust denial' and 'intelligent conversation' belong nowhere near each other.

Ok, a little more info than what i actually posted: he was saying to compare the censuses from before and after the war, and that there weren't 6M less. I agree that denying the holocaust isn't part of an intelligent conversation, but denying the "facts" about it isn't the same as just denying it. I think we're agreeing with each other. Also, from some other comments it seems to me that the 6M(as in Jew only) number is a blatant fallacy. All that does is bring more questions though.

but denying the "facts" about it isn't the same as just denying it

i do agree, thank you for clarifying what he said.

Also, from some other comments it seems to me that the 6M(as in Jew only) number is a blatant fallacy

you're talking about comments from a sub that mostly anti-Israel (doesn't necessarily have to do with our conversation, but i digress) and quite often anti-Semitic. If i were you i would refrain from making assumptions on the subject based solely on the responses you got from the reddit conspiracy sub. Did any of the responses you got contain any reputable sources, because all im seeing are websites that are well known for their holocaust denial or anti-semitism.

Someone in here posted 2 pictures of a plaque at auschwitz. The old one said 4M died there, and the new one said around 1.5M died there, yet the 6M number never changed. There's also a blog post that someone posted in here with a bunch of sources(that i haven't checked myself) about there being no real evidence of gas chambers having been used. That blog post was in the same comment as a bunch of other links, a couple of which i started reading, but found too biased to take as legitimate. I'm not taking everything as fact that i read, but i feel like i have to read the side biased "against the Jews" since everything I've ever heard or read was biased the other way. It seems impossible to find a real discussion on the matters.

Someone in here posted 2 pictures of a plaque at auschwitz. The old one said 4M died there

well the first picture makes no mention of Auschwitz, the bricks in the background look similar, but without a source its hard to know where that came from or if its even real. Having said that, even if 6 million Jews were actually killed in the holocaust, its hard to believe that 4 million of them died in one place. I would say the second plaque is certainly more accurate, and that number is backed up even by the US Holocaust Museum.

Quite frankly, i don't think that the plaque in the first picture is real. If someone could prove it was in fact real at some point, i would be more than willing to acknowledge that.

I know it's wikipedia, and you could argue it's validity but a few quick Google searches and here's what i found: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

I believe around 1990 the first sign was removed and replaced, possibly on a different wall. I'm on my phone so i have trouble linking to a specific section. It was under the "death toll" part. If you read it, it says that historians never really believed the 4M number. Most estimates from my past few minutes of research say somewhere between 900K and 1.1M died there. It also states that these numbers do not justify a change in the 6M number, because that came from German documents and not from adding together the extermination camps death tolls. It says that that is a common claim from holocaust deniers to try and make historians look like they're lying.

So, i don't think the 6M number is a blatant fallacy as i said previously, but i still wonder what kind of things we don't know. It does make sense after some of the reading I've done to talk about this holocaust over the 25-30M holocaust in the context of it nearly eradicating a race/religion. I'd like to see the holocaust denying laws repealed, and I'd like to be able to have an intelligent conversation about all this stuff. I'd like the NSA to quit watching me too though. I think it's possible to get to the bottom of it all if it was all in the open. The part that makes me suspicious is the fact that some places it's illegal to talk about it. I'm not saying Jews rule the world, but as i stated here elsewhere i do feel they are overrepresented.

Yes, someone else provided another link that seemed relatively reputable, that stated the sign in question did in fact exist at Auschwitz around the early 90's.

But i asked him, where the 4 million number came from? Was it put there by the Polish government or a Jewish group? im not really sure, but it doesn't seem like an official number. As i also mentioned to him that the US Holocaust Memorial Museum lists the Jewish deaths at Auschwitz at under 1 million, yet they still maintain that the number of Jewish deaths during the entirety of the Holocaust is around 5.7 million.

at this point, does it really matter?

It does just as much as any other conspiracy theory. Everything matters.

its not our fight, we have our own battles to pick now, we dont need to be arguing about history dating back 70 years ago. Lets agree that Hitler wasnt a stand up guy and call it a day.

I'm ok with you doing that, but I'm a firm believer that if we don't learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it. I believe tptb understand this very well at least as far as controlling the masses are concerned. I feel like it's my duty to be a truth seeker no matter how harsh that truth.

It matters because people are thrown in jail for doing nothing more than questioning 6,000,000.

In America 6,000,000 is in every history textbook, and we the people paid for a museum on the banks of the Potomac to espouse this lie.

Thrown in jail?

In some places, mostly Europe as I understand it, it's a crime to deny the holocaust.

I see. It really is in all of our textbooks just like that kite-flying forefather of ours. Not saying there weren't 6M, just saying I've been fooled once.

I think it's healthy to question the status-quo. Stifling that is not good for the culture at large. There was an AMA not long ago by a soldier who was at Dachau when it was liberated. I believe. Anyways, that might be a good read through.

One thing to remember is that it wasn't just the Jews but any dissidents deemed unfit, and that number seems a bit arbitrary anyways.

Yeah, i know it wasn't just the Jews, and Im not particularly looking for holocaust denying stuff. Like i said, it's a whole category of conspiracy theories i skipped over for comfort i guess. It's convenient to look at Hitler as the #1 evil guy ever and use him for comparisons. I really don't know anything about Jews either good or bad. I've seen folks getting really angry that no one talks about the other holocausts, the ones that killed ~5x more people than the German/Jewish one. That's where the numbers matter in some minds. If 6M is printed in every American history book, why don't they say anything about the 30M holocaust? Im not saying that would change any facts of the 6M holocaust. Did anyone keep a neutral journal of the ordeal? All they taught me in school is he killed 6M, there were big piles of shoes and watches, Anne Frank, and he pussed out and suicided. Seriously, that's all i remember from school. Also, it is called THE holocaust. The 30M one - i don't even know if that has a name, and i couldn't even tell you the guys name that did it. We all know who Hitler was though. He was the biggest evil ever to come to this planet, and Murica democratized his ass. Geez, been up drinking coffee all day and Im getting ranty the past few hours. Hitler did do those good things i mentioned in my original post. I've seen some shows on the history channel about Nazi technology. All I've seen are theories. I'm actually planning on doing some research about Judaism itself too. I was raised a Christian and my family talked bad about Jews. I just don't know shit about them, and i want to. Another thing that I've heard but don't know is that we created Israel right after ww2. Kinda weird since the country that got the land taken from it wasn't Germany. Did we really delete all the history we didn't want seen? If so, why?

Haha, no worries. I get where you're coming from and to be honest, I'm not as well versed as I should be to frame anything major as to why. I tend to agree and understand your questioning though.

Many times in the wake of such tragedies, the good is often overlooked for the overbearing "bad" for which they are known. One thing I've come to learn is that America has permanent interests, never permanent friends. Our foreign policy is based on what we can get out of it for the given situation. Which is why I think a lot of other mass-killings on that scale are overlooked or ignored. I don't know. Look at Africa and the latest tragedies over the last couple decades. Why didn't we intervene there? Why not go after Kony?

For instance, I find it terribly ironic that we trained Bin Laden in the 80's to help drive out the Soviet Union. Or how we backed Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war. We created the very thing the so-called war on terror is fighting. Yet what our politicians blatantly choose to ignore (or just don't give a shit, narcissism at its finest), is that if you come to my land and mess with my people, you're going to get a justified foot in the ass.

Particularly in the wake of this NSA debacle, I find it even more disturbing what the news outlets choose to cover; notice the glaring lack of discussion about it. Notice the national apathy that is drowning out the real anger about it. The sleight of hand to distract gen-pop. But, there's only so much time for so many sound bytes that sell corporate ads. What will wip the population in to a patriotic frenzy? I think it largely comes down to mass-manipulation and control. Create a status-quo whether legitimate or fabricated, disagree or question it and you're tagged as a trouble maker. It's a statist sort of thing I suppose.

Check out the documentary - Why We Fight, www.sonyclassics.com/whywefight. In it, then president Dwight Eisenhower even warns of the rising military industrial complex and the rest of the film shows just how it slipped neatly in to place in the years following WW2. War sells, peace doesn't. Citizen, pick up that can. :)

Ninja Edit - formatting

I know all about saddam and i know all about osama. I should know about Hitler too dammit. I guess maybe i just didn't live close enough to that time to get the facts. Maybe our grandchildren will only know osama and saddam as a couple evil leaders that we defeated. I hope not. Also, i have seen why we fight. Good flic. Dwights farewell speech gives me goosebumps every time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial

Holy shit! There are people doing 5+ years in prison for this, and that chart ended in '09.

Hey man, Im not looking for someone to tear into. Im looking for some insight. If you know something you think i should lets hear it. Like i said in the post, IDGAF what your personal beliefs are, but if you know about people going to jail over questioning this or if you know where i can get some evidence on the 6M being a propagandist number, let's have it!

Well, I know that no one walked down the line counting, "5,999,997...5,999,998...5,999,999...6,000,000. There. My job is done."

The number appears to be based on some obscure religious prophecy.

"6,000,000" was used for fund-raisers dating back to 1900.

The plaque at Auschwitz changed from 4 million to 1.5 million in 1989. Yet somehow, that didn't change the, uh, "accepted historical figure".

It seems weird that the number should be touted the way it has. Six Mutha-lovin' Million! I would be ashamed if 6,000,000 of my ancestors stripped down and walked into gas chambers without a fight.

Im going to read this book i just downloaded or at least start it after i finish my current one. Those 2 plaques are pretty damning evidence as far as the 6M number.

The number 6,000,000 is of Cabalistic (Jewish mystisim) significance. Be careful jumping down the esoteric rabbit hole though.

Millions more Christians died but we barely hear a peep about it. Its rather obvious that Jews took advantage of the Holocaust. One negative word about the Jews and BAM your an anti-semetic for the rest of your life. Just look at Reddit, thousands of posts bashing on Christians and hardly anyone bats an eye. Ever see a negative post on Judaism make the front page?

Yeah, I've kind of gotten that feel and understood some time back i was being a part of the "you're just a fucking racist! I don't care about heart surgery." Is the even an equivalent of antisemite for any other race or religion? Its just called being a racist or a bigot. A lot of it seems fishy.

Millions more Christians died but we barely hear a peep about it

millions more Christians died, but the percentage of the Jewish population that died was exponentially larger than the percentage of the Christian population that died. That likely has a lot to do with why you barely hear a peep about it.

Let me clarify. The point I am trying to make is that Zionists drastically inflated the number of Jewish deaths while downplaying the number of Christian deaths in order to gain sympathy. Personally, I think it was a brilliant move even though I don't agree with it.

The point I am trying to make is that Zionists drastically inflated the number of Jewish deaths

Most people in this thread seem to be trying to make this point, my question is do you have any proof from a reputable source?

Here is one from a Jewish source:

"Mr. Bauer said, the larger figures "have been dismissed for years, except that it hasn't reached the public and I think it's about time that did."

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Bauer/OOF_121189.html

Even his figure has been called too high. If you give me some time I can find you plenty more sources if you'd like.

most frequently cited figures list 2.5 million Jewish victims and 1.5 million others - (from your article)

what i would like to know, and something i didn't find in your article, is who is providing that number? I could be wrong but it doesn't seem as if that is the official number, but one just spouted by someone (as you have stated) trying to inflate the numbers. Because the US Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates the number of Jewish deaths at Auschwitz less than one million, yet they still maintain the number of Jewish deaths is somewhere close to 5.7 million.

nearly 1 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz

[deleted]

What I can do (and have) is show that the original number of deaths has been proven wrong again and again

but you haven't proven that 4 million was the 'original' number. You gave me an article that stated some Jewish historian (who's legitimacy im not questioning) saw somewhere people or possibly Jews claiming 4 million people died at Auschwitz. What you provided me with is nothing more than hearsay. What you have proven is that at one point there was a sign in Auschwitz that read "4 million people died here" and you are correct, that is obviously false. But we don't know who put that sign there, it could have been the Polish government for all we know, nor do we know where they (who ever placed the sign) got that number from.

the Jews grossly inflated the number of deaths

this is a gross generalization, "the Jews" did no such thing, specific Jews or specific Jewish groups may have. There is a major distinction.

Elsewhere ITT: someone stated that's its not the number that makes it a bigger deal. It's the percentage of all Jews killed compared to the percentage of Christians killed. A valid point imo.

also "six million" is a mythical or prophetic figure to the jews that appeared in papers and books dozens of times prior to WW2

• http://rense.com/general93/twozi.htm

• http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=24369

• http://zioncrimefactory.com/the-six-million-myth/

• http://www.historiography-project.com/misc/graf_jewishlosses.html

• http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_the_death_of_six_million_Jews_during_World_War_2_talked_about_more_than_the_25_million_Russians_who_were_killed

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dda-0Q_XUhk

GOGO JIDF!

I won't read anything from rense. That shit is never legit. I read the Winston smith blog one and it seemed pretty legit. I also read some of the one from thetruthseeker, but it's obvious bias discredited it for me. Haven't read/watched the others yet, but i hope they're closer to the blog than the other 2.