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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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@2rafa is correct. You can read Cole’s own description of his changing beliefs on the Holocaust here.

Here’s an excerpt relating to his current beliefs, which he has held since the mid-90s:

Korherr, with unfettered access to all SS documents, definitively concluded that as of the beginning of 1943, slightly over 2.4 million Jews had been killed in the Reinhard camps, the Ostland ghettoes (which functioned as death camps), and by the Einsatzgruppen execution squads.

You’d think that Himmler’s official death census would be in every Holocaust book. But no. “Great” scholars like Yad Vashem’s Yehuda Bauer rarely if ever cite it (in his 1982 magnum opus A History of the Holocaust, Bauer doesn’t cite Korherr once).

Deniers never cite Korherr either.

Amazing, huh? With the Mao and Stalin death toll, we’re forced to roughly calculate the figure via demographic extrapolation. But with the Holocaust, we have the main perpetrator, Himmler, commissioning a specific census of the murdered. A number. Everyone agrees it’s a legit document, yet few use it.

Why?

Because if you accept 2.4 million for the beginning of 1943, you cannot get to six million by April 1945. From ‘43 to ‘45, there would simply not be enough Jews subjected to “aktions” to get to 6 mil. Every mainstream scholar agrees that by the close of 1942, two-thirds of all Holocaust deaths had already occurred. So Korherr’s figure presents a problem.

That’s why I put my approximate figure of total Holocaust dead at 3.5 to 3.6 million. But not six. You simply cannot get to six in the two remaining years of the war.

Meanwhile, deniers won’t accept a figure above 271,000. Accepting 2.4 million by 1943? That blasphemes the tenets of their cult. It can’t be more than 300,000, period! Their pseudo-religion dictates it.

Korherr, with unfettered access to all SS documents, definitively concluded that as of the beginning of 1943, slightly over 2.4 million Jews had been killed in the Reinhard camps

It should be noted that the Korherr report says no such thing at all. The Korherr report says explicitly that the 1.2 million Jews were resettled through the camps of General Government, which is what the Revisionists say happened. And Richard Korherr himself wrote a letter to Der Spiegel in the 1970s clarifying that he specifically asked what that number referred to, and was told it referred to resettlement.

So the document directly states what the Revisionists say happened, Richard Korherr confirmed that was his own interpretation of that number in the 1970s, and the "2.4 million Jews had been killed in the Reinhard camps" is not stated in the report whatsoever, that's just the mainstream position begging the question.

David Cole is just relying on the fact that his audience doesn't know better, so they'll believe him when he just lies about what the Korherr report says.

David said "Deniers never cite Korherr either" is his typical style of outright lying when he knows his audience won't have background knowledge to verify what he's saying. Here's the Revisionist work on Treblinka Ctrl + F "Korherr"- 17 results with good discussion.