What does liquidation mean in Goering’s diaries?

There is one puzzle I try to solve. It is, what does liquidation mean in the context of Jews being sent to Operation Reinhardt camps?

Liquidation is the word used by Göbbels in his diary, while Korherr in his report uses the word processed, which replaces the earlier word Special Action. Main stream Holocaust historians interpret all these words as meaning extermination in sense that the vast majority of Jews sent to these camps were gassed and the bodies were burned. A small number of Jews were left to live for a while to do this killing, burning and robbing the Jews of their possessions.

This main stream explanation has the advantage that liquidation is sometimes used as a synonym for assassination or murder, while its normal meaning is turning assets to cash. Processed has for instance the meaning of processed food, which in this case does not fit. Special Action was used in Auschwitz to refer to all special tasks done by Sonderkommandos (Special units), such as burning bodies in crematoria, exhuming and burning bodies in open fire, selecting ill prisoners for quarantine, and so on.

There are many problems with this main stream explanation. One is that the explanation does not fit the famous diary entry of Göbbels where the word liquidates appears:

“The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.” Göbbel’s diaries, March 27, 1942.

The number of Jews sent to the Operation Reinhardt camps (by December 31, 1942) is given as 1,274,166 both in the Hölfe telegram and in the Korherr report. If we understand that the word liquidated means gassing and burning the body, then 60% of this number, 764,500, are killed, but 40%, 509,666, are used for work. Where could half a million Jews have been used for work in those small camps? They would have been moved to the Russian east, as the Korherr report says, but according to the main stream explanation they were not moved anywhere from the camps: almost 100% were killed at the camp. So, Göbbels was totally mistaken in his diary account writing about 60% and 40%. That is a problem.

The second problem is that the sized of the mass graves seem too small for 1.274 million bodies. From the sizes of the mass graves I estimate that there are about 150,000 bodies. It is unclear where they took the wood to burn 1.274 million bodies in pits, as forest is not cut to a visible degree, and finally, if the purpose is to gas and burn Jews, why send them to Operation Reinhardt camps, where there are no decent crematoria, only pits in the ground, why not send them to Auschwitz? The mass graves have not been opened and no scientific estimation of the number of bodies in the graves has been made. There are bodies, that is sure, just how many?

But fine, it is possible to argue that neither problem is fatal to the explanation.

That does not help because there is a fatal problem. It is a mathematical one. I calculated in [1] that 260,000 Central European or Western Polish Jews passed these camps and survived the war. They came to DP-camps after 1946 and went from there to Israel. It is a small fraction of 1.274 million, but it is a huge number of people. So many were not taken to sort the clothes and burn the bodies in the camps. They survived the camps. It means that the main stream explanation is definitely wrong. I only did simple calculation in [1] and find my argument fully convincing.

What else could liquidate mean?

There are the following clues:

The archive in Bad Arolsen does not contain any document which says that Nazis were gassing Jews, but the trace of the Jews sent to Operation Reinhardt camps ends there.

The Korherr report characterizes these Jews as being processed. The word processed replaces the original word, Special Action. Korherr later testified that he asked what the word Special Action means and was told that it means resettlement in the Lublin area. Majdanek is close to Lublin, but Lublin may have been used to refer to the (former) eastern Poland in general. The Korherr report states that 1,449,692 Jews were deported to the Russian east and this figure is divided into 1,274,166 Jews, who were processed in the General Government, meaning the three Operation Reinhard camps, and 145,301 Jews, who were processed in Warthegau, meaning the Chełmno camp. The number 1,274,166 appears as the total in the Hölfe telegram. Thus, it is the correct number of Jews sent to the Operation Reinhardt camps up to December 31, 1942. Treblinka and Sobibór operated up to October 1943 while Bełżec operated to the end of December 1942. The total number of Jews transferred to these camps is larger than 1.274 million. I estimate it as 1.48 million in [1].

The diary of Göbbels has two more entries mentioning the word liquidated:

“…the greater the number of Jews liquidated, the more consolidated will the situation in Europe be after this war.” March 6, 1942.

“Short shrift is made of the Jews in all eastern occupied areas. Tens of thousands of them are liquidated.” April 29, 1942.

These references do not clarify the word liquidated, but being liquidated seems to remove the Jews from being in the work force and a threat to Europe. It could mean killing, but it could mean being transferred out of Europe.

The new Franke-Gricksch report describes the Operation Reinhardt as a plunder operation: all money, precious metals and precious stones were taken from the Jews. It does not mention gassings or mass killings. In this way it differs from the Gerstein report that Gerstein wrote in 1945 in an Allied prison. Gerstein’s report is therefore not an original document and if the Franke-Gricksch report that was released in 2010 is authentic, it must be given more weight. In this Franke-Gricksch report there is the following text (italics mine):

“If you watch these masses of Jews, in small groups sitting round a fire, you can see how they become very fat with composure and civility. The only explanation for this is that they look upon themselves as the chosen people and with this servility and toughness they represent a danger for the world as long as they are not wither done away with completely or put in vast areas where they are completely isolated from human culture and perish slowly. In those camps in Poland now the Jews live in a Babylonian exile as in the olden days. They were suppressed by the Egyptians and they were exploited by the Romans and under the various systems of modern times which exploited them but again and again they have succeeded in surviving: and have created new positions for themselves and within a few generations made these positions into key positions.

Walking through this camp and watching these people in there [sic] servile attitude, one is bound to notice that again and again they try to make the best of every situation without any dignity and self-respect and one realises the alternative with which we are faced: either this generation of ours succeeds in clearing up the Jewish problem completely and to its last consequences or, if their liquidation is not completely achieved, the Jewish people will rise again after this wave of oppression. Some individual cases may appear hard or even brutal but seeing these people in large masses and knowing how dangerous their passive attitude is to the life of the nations, one comes to the conclusion that this problem has to be cleared up completely to free the world once and for all of this pestilence.”

Here we have the word liquidate. There seems to be two alternative ways of liquidating Jews: one is to do away with completely, that must mean killing, or to put them in isolated areas where they slowly perish, that means, move them out of Europe.

Moving Jews out of Europe was closely related to the Palestine plan. Hitler’s library contains a book where he had underlined the sentence that Jews must be restored to Palestine. In order to understand what the word liquidate may have meant for Nazis it can be a good idea to see what it meant in the Palestine plan. Theodore Herzl used this word in the context of Jewish property in Der Judenstadt and the meaning was to turn property into money.

If this is the meaning, liquidating Jews means the same as redeeming them with money: the property is turned to cash. That would fit to the plunder operation that Franke-Gricksch report describes. It would fit to the words processed and Special Action in the Korherr report, since this liquidation was really the termination of this working force. It would fit to burning passports of the Jews.

Something totally different happened to these Jews in the Operation Reinhardt camps. They were not just a transit camps. The trace of these Jews ends there. If they were not killed, then what happened to them?

I estimate in [1] that about 1.48 million were transported to the three Operation Reinhardt camps. I also estimate that the mass graves in these sites contain about 150,000 bodies. If these estimates are correct, there remained 1.3 million Jews. If 60% of 1.3 million were exchanged for money in the plunder operation, not killed but taken to Ukrainian swamps from where they would have been helped forward by the other party of this agreement (some kind of Zionists), there would have to be some 780,000 released Jews, who tried to get to Palestine. Their goal had to be Palestine, since redemption can only be seen as a part of the new exodus.  Probably not all of them made it to Palestine, but the majority should have done it.

Are there 780,000 redeemed Jews somewhere?

Let us make a brief look at the demographics and immigration numbers of Israel. A small review of the figures convinces us that no large unknown group of Holocaust survivors can be hidden in Israel. All immigration numbers can be tracked to existing and known Jewish populations and to the natural population growth. This time we cannot blame Israel.

Today Israel has high fertility averaging 3 children per woman and 2% population growth annually, while the OECD average is 0.6%. However, in the previous decades the Jewish population growth was a bit smaller, 1.4%, which is still much larger than in Europe and incidentally, but not accidentally, the same as the long term average population growth for European Jews that I calculated in [2]. In the last decade the Jewish population growth has increased to 1.7%, mainly because ultra-orthodox Jews have many children. Muslims of Israel have had a higher population growth, but it dropped from 3% to 2.2% in the last decade. But let us check that there are no 780,000 hidden holocaust survivors in Israel.

In 2008 there were 2,043,800 Israel Jews, whose father was born in Israel and 1,662,800 Jews, who either were born in Europe or the father was born in Europe. The Jewish population of Israel in 1948 was 806,000. The natural population growth of European Jewish population has been about 1.4% annually, meaning that in a decade the population grows by 14.9% and it doubles every 50 years. A male generation is typically 30 years. Of the 1,662,800 Jews or European own or paternal origin in the year 2008, 923,600 were from FSU. Almost all of them migrated, or their father migrated, to Israel in the decade 1990-2000. In the year 1990 there were 200,000 immigrants to Israel, almost all from FSU, and in total 1 million migrated from FSU to Israel, but not all were Jews, some were spouses. Other immigrants or children of immigrants from Europe numbered 739,200. Most of them moved to Israel soon after 1948.

That is already enough numbers to make calculations that show something new.

In 1948 there were 806,000 Jews in Israel. From 1948 to 1978 is one generation, 30 years, and also from 1978 to 2008 is one generation. The immigrants from FSU came after 1990 and their children, who were born in Israel did not have children yet in 2008. Immigrants from other European countries mainly came to Israel soon after 1948 and as there is two generations from 1948 to 2008, their children, who were born in Israel, were just starting to have children. We can assume that the natural population growth was 1.4 annually, 14.9% in a decade and 52% in a generation. It means that the 806,000 in 1948 grew to about 1,225,000 by 1978 and to about 1,862,000 by 2008.

Israel took 338,000 Jews from European DP camps during 1948-53. This population grew to 777,000 by the year 2008. Some of these people already had fathers born in Israel. In 2008 there were 739,200 Jews in Israel with own or paternal origin in Europe other than FSU. This gives an estimate to the number of descendants in 2008 of the 338,000 Jews from DP camps whose father was born in Israel as 777,000-739,200=37,800. That is a reasonable estimate.

Adding these 37,800 people to the 1,862,000 descendants of the original 806,000 in 1948 gives most of the 2,043,800 Israelis of Israeli paternal birth in 2008. The reminder 2,043,800-1,862,000-37,800=144,000 can be assigned to grandchildren of Israelis of African and Asian birth. In 2008 there were 859,100 Israelis from Africa by own or paternal origin and 681,400 from Asia.

In addition to Jews of paternal Israelite, or own or paternal European, African and Asian origins, there were 249,800 Jews in Israel in 2008 with own or paternal origins from America and Oceania. They are a relatively small group and will not play any role in these calculations. It may be said that they are genetically mostly of European origin.

The African and Asian group, the Mizraim Jews, numbered 1,540,500 in 2008. A generation earlier, in 1978, they were about 1,013,500. Still a generation earlier, in 1948, this population numbered about 666,800. This seems correct. About 900,000 Jews immigrated from the Arab countries to Israel between 1948 and 1970ies. The largest groups in 2008 from Asia were from Iraq 233,500 and Iran 134,700. The populations in 1948 would have been about 101,000 in Iraq and 58,000 in Iran. These seem like realistic numbers: some 120,000 Iraqi Jews were airlifted to Israel in 1952 and about 30,000 Iranian Jews moved to Israel in 1952 and some 15,000 in 1979.

These numbers for Miszraim Jews in Israel fit very well to the sizes of existing Jewish populations. No large groups of unknown Holocaust survivors can be hidden in these numbers.

Israelis from Russian or Soviet own or paternal origins numbered 923,600 in 2008. Yet according to Israeli sources between 1990 and 2009 some 1.25 million people immigrated to Israel, about 80% from FSU. 80% of 1.25 million is one million, but let us notice that not all were Jews, there were non-Jewish spouses. The number of Jews is usually given as 800,000. Statistics shows that their number reduced from 923,600 in 2008 to 891,700 in 2015. The reason for this reduction cannot be that the descendants are counted in the number of Jews with Israeli paternal origins. If a person migrated from Russia in 1990, his children cannot have children in 2015. The Jews of Russian origins simply reduce in number. Either they immigrate elsewhere, like to the USA, or they have a negative population growth, like Russians and some other European populations

Their population decrease from 2008 to 2015 corresponds to 0.5% yearly reduction. If the same happened in the Soviet Union for 60 years, the population that moved to Israel was originally 1,248,000 in 1948. The Jewish population in the Soviet Union in 1948 is announced as 2 million. That would indicate that in 2015 there still remained about 556,000 people of Jews in Russia. Those, who identify themselves as Jews in Russia are maybe 180,000, but people of Jewish descent can well reach over 500,000. These figure match quite fine with the reality, but almost any figures would, the statistics from the Soviet Union is so vague and Russian Jews assimilated so much that not much can be said.

We see also reduction in the figures of Israeli Jews of Romanian and Polish own or paternal origins. These numbers dropped from 213,100 in 2008 to 199,400 in 2015 for Romania and from 198,500 in 2008 to 185,400 respectively in 2015 for Poland, but this mechanism is not the same that reduced the number of Jews of own or paternal Russian origin. The reduction in both Romanian and Polish origin figures is about 1% in a year and it is explainable by the time from 1948 to 2015, 67 years being just over 2 generations. Jews from these countries migrated to Israel soon after 1948 and their children have just started having children, and they are counted as Israelites with Israelite paternal birth. As already mentioned, Jews, who came from other European countries than FSU, migrated to Israel soon after 1948 and their number grew from 338,000 in 1948 to 777,000 in 2008. Only Russian Jews have the negative population growth, though it may also indicate migration to the USA.

So, that’s it. Israel comes up clean. It is not hiding any unknown Holocaust survivors.

Let us still check the early years. We can divide the population of Israel into components:

Year  Population             -1948           1948-58          1958-68          1968-78

1948 806,000              806,000

1958 2,032,000          926,094           1,105,906

1968 2,841,000          1,064,082        1,270,685        506,233

1978 3,738,000          1,222,630        1,460,018        581,661           473,691

In the table the column -1948 means immigration waves to Israel up to 1948. In 1948 this population was 806,000 and then it grew with 14,9% in a decade reaching 1,222,630 in 1978. As 14.9% population growth of this original population gives only 926,094 for the year 1958, I had to add immigration 1948-58 of 1,105,906 people in order to get the correct population figure of 2,032,000 for the year 1958. Unfortunately the numbers are for the whole Israel population and not only for Jews, but the Jews were mostly excluded from Israel in the beginning. The immigration of 1,105,906 is largely explained by the immigration of 723,090 Jews to Israel between 1948-53.

You may say that better statistics is available, and that is true, but it is from the official sources and if we do not believe them, then what. My simple theoretical statistics with the growth rate of 1.4% annually has the advantage that it can inform if there is something strange in the official statistics of a country. It did show in [2] that Walter Sanning may be correct suspecting the US figures. There seems to be nothing strange in Israeli figures since 1948, so let us look at the earlier time. I always had the feeling it was not Israel, it was some strange group of Zionists, and I do not mean the official Zionist organization. I suspect pre-Zionists (Freemasons, Frankists, Kabbalists, some bankers).

In 1922 there were 84,000 Jews in Palestine. By 1948, that is in 26 years, assuming 1.4% natural population growth, this population grew to 120,600. There were transfers to Palestine during the war. Legally were transferred 75,000 during 1939-46 and illegally by Aliyah Bet were transferred 110,000 during the war.  As there were some years of war, these figures could be rounded up slightly to account for the normal population growth, but the effect is small.

These two components explain 306,000 of the Jewish population in 1948. The Jewish population was 630,000 in 1947 and 806,000 in 1948. Legal immigration to Palestine during 1923-1938 was 306,296. The time is only 15 years and the largest immigration waves were around 1936. This figure is also increased by population growth, maybe by 20% to 370,000. There seems to be missing some 130,000. I will assume that this number of Jews escaped from Eastern Europe and migrated illegally to Palestine without the help of Aliyah Bet.

So here I have a simple arithmetical argument that 130,000 unknown Holocaust survivors did reach Palestine before 1948. The number is small, but still something. You better check it.

In [1] calculated that from East Europe that belonged to the Soviet Union after the war came to DP-camps after 1946 a number of Jews. Their number was 383,000, which I divided to 123,000 from Romania and 260,000 from West Poland or Western and Central Europe. They could have migrated to Israel, USA, Canada or South Africa after 1948, but if they were on a new exodus, they chose Israel.

Together these numbers sum to:

• known legal and illegal transfers to Palestine 1939-46, 185,000,
• Inferred illegal transfer to Palestine 1939-46, 130,000,
• Survivors from East to DP-camps after 1946, 383,000.

Together these figures make 698,000. Is this 60% of anything?

Maybe it is what remained from 60% of 1.3 million.

If some 1,450,000 were transported to Operation Reinhardt camps and in these three camps died 150,000, there were 1,300,000 left. Of them 60% is 780,000. If 700,000 of them survived the war in some way or another, it may be possible to interpret word liquidate in the diary entry by Göbbels as meaning redeem with money.

I hoped this would have been my last word on the Holocaust, but now revising this text I must admit I still wrote some posts on this topic. People are fed up with this issue, so am I. I only look at it because it is essential for understanding 9/11 and other things closer to our time. People are brain washed. I noticed it when I explained to one person in 2014 that there is very little evidence of 1.45 million killed in the Operation Reinhardt camps. He just googled his phone and told me that they just found a gas chamber in Sobibor. Yes. Exactly. They found some structures under a road. How is it known to be a gas chamber? Not that I deny gas chambers, only asking how this one is known to be one. Yes, how? If they used carbon monoxide, there are no traces. And did they not use carbon monoxide produced by a diesel motor from a Russian submarine, which Germans had not captured and which does not produce enough carbon monoxide? Something like that, but the always reliable Wikipedia tells that the gas chamber was found in 2014. That we can trust. This is why I hate writing posts on this topic, but in a blog of conspiracy theories, this topic cannot be omitted.

Hopefully I did not offend anybody. I actually do research and do not do propaganda. I do not claim anything, or at most that my calculations are correct, I use the best sources I can find, and I do not cheat.

References:

[1] Were 1.48 million Jews killed in Treblinka, Sobibór and Bełżec? This blog, post 2 on holocaust.

[2] How many Jews immigrated to the USA between 1924 and 1939? This blog, post 4 on holocaust.