Babi Yar: Critical Questions and Comments (ревізіонізм голокосту) Read online

  • How many such oven gratings would one need to construct in order to cremate that many bodies in so crude a manner? Would it even work at all?

  • Where did the enormous quantities of fuel come from? Based on findings from India - the only country where bodies are cremated in the manner under discussion here - we note:

  To achieve a marginally adequate, but nevertheless still only partial cremation, 200,000 bodies would require at least 51 million pounds of firewood - a pile 3 ft. high, 3 ft. wide and 34 miles long. Who cut this firewood, and where? How was this huge quantity transported? Who carried the countless bodies to the cremation site? Who removed the remains? Where are the witnesses from among this veritable army of laborers? The claim that cremation gratings were constructed from graveside rails is even less credible; these gratings would have collapsed almost immediately due to the heat.

  3. The unnamed son-in-law of one Chaim Shapiro who was taken to Babi Yar recounts:[13]

  "At the cemetery the Jews were forced to undress. Fifty six thousand (56,000) Jews were slaughtered. Those who did not die instantly were buried alive. [...]

  [...] on the tenth day [after the shooting] we were driven to Lukianova [Babi Yar] ravine. We stood there panic-stricken. From beneath the freshly strewn earth streamed rivers of blood, the blood of 56,000 murdered Jews. It cried to us from under the earth. My hair turned gray that morning."

  • From where does Chaim Shapiro's son-in-law get his information? What is his name, anyhow? Why was he not among the victims? After all, wasn't everyone allegedly killed? What was the date? Where is the murder site? Why is the place where the victims undressed not the same as the other witnesses claim?

  • What would a forensic doctor say about the rivers of blood allegedly streaming from bodies killed ten days earlier?

  • The part about the blood crying from the earth is from the Bible; in Genesis 4:10 we read:

  "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground."

  • Can hair spontaneously turn gray?

  • Were Jews forcibly driven to the site of the mass murder in order to produce witnesses?

  4. In E. R. Wiehn's book, L. Levitas[28] tells of one Riva Kogut, who was later known as Raissa Genrichovna Dashkevich:

  "Early on September 29 the Kyiv Jews walked in a continuous line in the direction of Syretz to the train station [...] First the documents were taken away and [...] thrown onto a pile, at the next point the luggage was taken away, [...] already on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery the people were forced with clubs to undress and were then driven to the ravine. That was the ravine of Babi Yar. Then the people were driven [...] down the slope of the ravine. [...] where narrow, terrace-like places had already been prepared. [...] From the opposite side came the thunder of machine guns. There, [...] hundreds of Jews were shot. [...] Everything happened so fast, [...] blows [...] dog bites [...]. The people lost their minds, many turned gray with horror. [...] A severe chill and the pain in my head forced me to move, I began to climb up. [...]"

  • Multiple graying of the hair?

  • To the train station?

  • Beaten up on the cemetery grounds?

  • Narrow terraces had been prepared? By whom? When, in the brief time since the taking of Kyiv?

  • Gunned down with machine guns from across the ravine?

  • Dog bites? Hundreds of victims - not tens or even hundreds of thousands?

  5. Dimitri Orlow, one of the alleged witnesses quoted in a 1980 Black Book from the 'Holocaust Library',[29] testified:

  "An entire office operation with desks had been set up in an open area. The crowd waiting at the barriers erected by the Germans at the end of the street could not see the desks. Thirty to forty persons at a time were separated from the crowd and led under armed guard for 'registration'. Documents and valuables were taken away. The documents were immediately thrown onto the ground, and witnesses have testified that the square was covered with a thick layer of discarded papers, torn passports, and union identification cards. Then Germans forced everyone to strip naked: girls, women, children, old men. [...] Their clothing was gathered up and carefully folded. Rings were ripped from the fingers of the naked men and women, and these doomed people were forced to stand at the edge of a deep ravine, where the executioners shot them at pointblank range. The bodies fell over the cliff, and small children were thrown in alive. Many went insane when they reached the place of execution."

  • Orlow allegedly saw all of this in the space of a few minutes, from the grounds of a cable factory.[30]

  • Date? Where was the office operation set up? How much personnel and time would the various operations require? Soviet citizens did not carry passports! Corroborating witnesses???

  • Even if the people at the barriers could not see the desks, they would not have failed to hear the gunfire. Why was there no attempt at escape, especially after dark? The rugged, fissured region was ideally suited for hiding.

  • At this point, an important general note. More than half of the alleged route taken to the execution site ran through built-up urban areas. Why did Stalin's thugs fail to locate decent witnesses even in this area? Why are there also no witnesses or reports from the Wehrmacht? Vacationers, for example, would hardly have kept such horrible goings-on to themselves.

  • We learn that groups of thirty to forty persons at a time were led off under armed guard. How much time would this alone take?

  • Children and girls? According to Jewish and Soviet sources almost everyone except for the elderly had been evacuated in time (for example, cf. the sources quoted by Sanning[31]).

  • It would take a very long time to carefully remove and fold the clothing of such great numbers of people.

  • So here the victims are standing at the edge of a deep ravine, in other words not in the ravine. Do people who were exposed to such an awful situation forget in only a very few years where the victims stood?

  • The bullets that missed their targets still flew a long way! What measures were taken to ensure that German units were not accidentally shot in the process? One of the military camps, for example, was only about a fifth of a mile away from the execution site.

  • The gradient of the pile of bodies soon becomes problematic. The executed victims must be moved off. Imagine, if you will, how long it would take two persons to extract one body from the bloody pile (which does not offer a very stable surface to stand on), to move it many dozens of yards on average, to deposit it and then to return to the pile of corpses. The place had to be cleared prior to new executions, and then to be manned. Added to this is the bringing-in of the earth and the covering of the mass graves with that earth. Why are there no witnesses for any of this either? Why do the air photos not show any traces of all this?

  • Small children were thrown in alive. Were they sorted out first? Or did the executioners shoot past them? Was the shooting interrupted for this horrible activity? Where was the cable factory from where Orlow was able to observe all this in a few minutes?

  6. According to Orlow,[13] other witnesses said that Germans "dashed the little ones against the rock".

  Anyone who reads the Bible attentively will find that Holocaust tales are nothing new to the Jews (Genesis 6, Genesis 19:24, Exodus 11, Joshua 6, Matthew 2:16). Furthermore, pious people in particular draw inspiration from scripture. Psalms 137:9:

  "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."

  7. Tamara Mikhasev:[7],[13],[32]

  "[...] a young Russian woman whose Jewish husband was a Commander in the Red Army [...] left the place of execution with an ethnic German who was married to a Jewish woman. [...] This Russified German picked up the boy [his son] again, kissed his eyes and said farewell to his wife and mother-in-law."

  • So a young Russian woman and an ethnic German were admitted as spectators at the execution site, to witness the top-secret mass execution of the Jews?

  • Mikhasev embellishes her story wi
th the barking of many dogs, and with dance melodies blaring from loudspeakers to drown out the screams of the victims.[33]

  8. The Jewess Nesya Elgort tells us:[7],[13],[34]

  "With her little son [she] miraculously escaped [...] untouched by the bullets [...] [from] under a heap of warm bloody bodies [...] hundreds and thousands of bodies piled on top of each other.

  [...] It is now difficult for me to understand how I got out of that ravine of death, but I crawled out, driven by an instinct for self-preservation."

  • Neither Nesya Elgort nor her little son was hit by a bullet! How did she manage to crawl out - with her child! - from beneath an enormous pile of bodies? Even with optimum positioning - which is more than unlikely, given the circumstances - the bodies would ultimately have weighted down the thoraces of mother and son to the point where breathing became impossible. One must also ask whether she or the child would not have been harmed by the impact of a body falling down on them, even from as little as 6 to 10 ft. above?

  • She escaped unnoticed from the ravine. Were there no guards?

  • Why were only women able to escape, but not a single one of the men, who in this case would have been physically better qualified?

  9. The Jewess Yelena Borodansky-Knysh arrived at Babi Yar[7],[13],[35]

  "[...] [when] it was already dark. [...] They took our clothing [...] and led us about fifty meters away, where they took our documents, money, rings, ear-rings. They wanted to remove the gold teeth of one old man, and he tried to resist.

  [...] At about midnight the command was given in German for us to line up. [...] A second later bodies started falling on me. [...] We were sandwiched between bodies. [...] A German soldier was checking with a bayonet to make sure no one was still alive. By chance he was standing on me, so the bayonet blow passed me.

  [...] I freed myself, got up, and took my unconscious daughter in my arms. I walked along ravines. [...] Crawling over ravines, I made my way to the village of Babi Yar."

  She also provides this sideline story from the place of horror:[36]

  "I'll never forget one girl, Sara; she was about fifteen years old. I can't describe how beautiful she was. Her mother was [...] killed with a rifle butt [...]. Five or six Germans stripped [the girl] naked, but I didn't see what happened after that. I didn't see."

  • Why did this witness not arrive at Babi Yar until after dark? On what day, anyway? Many witnesses would have noticed the great crowd of victims-to-be between the time of their morning gathering at the street corner and their much later arrival at the undressing-place. Where are all these witnesses?

  • The Jews allegedly had to report on the morning of September 29. But the murder took place not only on the 29th, but on September 30 as well. Wiehn[37] even claims that "the death march lasted three days and three nights." Where did the tens of thousands spend the night (or nights)?

  • According to this version, the victims were first stripped naked and then, about 50 meters away, relieved of documents, money and jewelry. Was the procedure changed every few minutes?! Why has no other witness mentioned that the victims' teeth were checked? How much time would that have taken?

  • Did the Kyiv Jews understand orders given in German?

  • How can the German soldier have stood on Yelena Knysh if she was covered by bodies? How much time would it take to climb over mountains of bodies in order to kill anyone still living with a bayonet? Were victims not buried alive after all?

  • Where exactly is the village of Babi Yar??? How likely is the story of the girl Sara's forcible stripping by five or six Germans, perhaps even within the range of machine gun scatter?

  10. One single eyewitness was permitted (or ordered) by the Soviets to testify abroad. In 1968 Dina Pronitscheva testified in Darmstadt in the trial of 11 members of Einsatzkommando 4a. The case files are kept under lock and key!

  Philip Shabecoff, reporter for the New York Times, wrote:[38]

  "When the shooting stopped, the walls of the ravine were dynamited and the rubble was shovelled over the bodies of the men, women and children who lay in it. Some were still alive when buried."

  What A. Kuznetsov learned from Pronitscheva and incorporated into his novel Babi Yar[39] does not agree with other testimony, for example:

  "[...] machine-gunning of the Jews by German soldiers across the width of the Babi Yar Ravine throughout the night, half in darkness, illuminated by a small bonfire."

  But the matter becomes even more confusing when one reads Dina Pronitscheva's account in Wiehn's opus[40]. Significant differences in her recorded statement at the Darmstadt Trial are added in parentheses, with the note S:

  "On September 28, 1941, an order from the German authorities was posted throughout the city [...] about 8 o'clock in the morning [S: at 8 o'clock] near Djechtjarewska and Melnik Streets [S: Djachterowskaja and Melnikow] [...] my parents and my sister went to the meeting place [...] [S: It was very hot.] I accompanied them and then intended to return to my family [...] Large groups of people. [...] They were accompanied by Ukrainians, Russians, and citizens of other nationalities [...]. The streets [...] leading to the cemetery area were totally overcrowded with people. As we neared the gathering place we noticed the encirclement by German soldiers and officers [...] policemen, too. [S: Tank riders.] [S: We went up a hill:] [...] led us in groups of about 40-50 into a so-called 'Corridor' about 10 ft. wide which was formed by Germans standing close together on either side, with sticks, rubber truncheons and dogs [...]. Everyone was brutally beaten by the Germans. [S: Many fell down and were trampled to a thin pulp.] [At] the place at the end of the 'Corridor' [...] policemen stripped them [...] down to their underwear. [S: stark naked.] The beaten and stripped people were taken in groups to the ravine of Babi Yar [...]. They led us to a ledge over the ravine and began to shoot us with submachine guns. [S: machine guns.] [S: entirely different version: a German soldier offered her freedom in return for sex. She claimed to be a Russian, proved it by means of an employment book and union card, was then sent up a hill and not driven into the ravine with others until evening, on the orders of a German officer.] [...] when it was my turn I threw myself into the ravine alive [S: jumped into the pit.] [...]. Here, too, Germans and policemen went around and shot or beat to death anyone who was still alive [...]. One of the policemen or Germans turned me over with his foot, [...] stepped on my hand and my breast [S: he beat me] [...]. Then they began to [...] cover the bodies with soil and sand. [S: I remained lying under the soil.] I couldn't breathe anymore, freed myself of the earth with one hand [S: my right hand, on which the soldier stood, gave me trouble] and crawled to the edge of the ravine [...]. On the second day I saw the Germans chase an old woman and a boy of about 5 or 6 years, who had fled from the ravine. The old woman was shot, they stabbed the boy with a knife. About 30 ft. away from this spot seven Germans came along, leading two young girls. They raped them there and then stabbed them to death."

  • Re. Shabecoff's report in the New York Times: who drilled the blast holes, where did the equipment come from, and why are there once again no witnesses to this considerable amount of work? Why is no trace of any of this visible on the air photos?

  • Re. Kuznetsov: they shot across the ravine at night? Wouldn't that endanger even their own people?

  • Re. what Wiehn[7] saw fit to publish, and re. Pronitscheva's testimony in Darmstadt, we have the following questions:

  • About 8 o'clock or at 8 o'clock? Incorrect street names from a Kyiv resident? Why is her 'weather report' entirely wrong? How can one return to one's family when they had just been transported? How were the Ukrainians, Russians and citizens of other (which?) nationalities separated from the doomed? Where is the hill? Why did all the other witnesses forget the 'Beating Corridor'? What are Tank riders?

  • Stripped down to their underwear, or stark naked? Employment book and union card retained even though she was stark naked? Ledge over the ravine? Ravine or pit? A hill? Submachine guns or machine guns? Has anyone e
ver tried to turn, with his foot, a person wedged between other bodies? The soldier beat a girl he presumed was dead? What presence of mind a girl must have, not to shriek or to react in some other way when someone steps on her hand and breast, or beats her! Why did no one notice that she freed herself? Not even the soldier standing on her right hand? How daring must a girl be, to still observe events near the site of the crime two days later - and how insensitive to the cold, considering that she is either in her underwear or entirely naked. How likely is the tale of the proposition and of the girls who were first raped and then stabbed? Sexual intercourse with Jews was considered defilement of the blood, and was forbidden. Why did she understand German in Babi Yar, but not a word of that language in Darmstadt? Might her job - actress in a puppet theater - explain her facility at confabulation?

  11. Ernst Klee, Willi Dreßen and V. Rieß[41] have culled the testimony of three witnesses - Höfer, Kurt Werner and Anton Heidborn - from the files held at the Central Office in Ludwigsburg; these files are not, however, made available to critical researchers.

  According to Höfer, the Jews had to undress and neatly stack their clothes at a spot 500 ft. from the ravine (according to Werner it was a kilometer, about  of a mile). Then the naked victims were led into a ravine which according to Höfer was 500 ft. long, 100 ft. wide and 50 ft. deep, whereas Werner claims it was 1,300 ft. long, 260 ft. wide at the top and 33 ft. wide at the bottom, and 33 ft. deep. According to Höfer, two or three narrow passages led into the ravine; according to Werner the victims were led to the edge of the hollow and then ran down the slopes of their own accord.

  Höfer maintains that there was only one marksman at each end of the ravine; Werner tells of a total of 12. Höfer testified that a "packer" stood at each end and placed each victim onto the previous bodies. Then each was shot by a member of the police, with a submachine gun, per a bullet in the neck. The children were shot together with their mothers.