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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29333 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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You can approach it from a totally non-Revisionist starting point, though, which I did. First ask how much wood to cremate a body. Then ask how much wood to cremate 5,000 bodies - i.e. "hundreds of cords of wood." So it's already giving Revisionist arguments before the topic comes up. I doubt that its answers to cremation in general are so heavily influenced by Revisionist arguments. It just walks directly into the Revisionist line of argumentation when starting from generalized questions like that.

There are also many published volumes of work explaining in detail how the cremations were allegedly done. A more kosher ChatGPT would just say "this is how it was done" and describe the process as claimed by mainstream historiography (I expect it will do this when it is more "advanced"). There is a lot of discussion of mass cremation in the mainstream literature, it is not an issue that is only discussed by Revisionsits. It's only Revisionists though who allege that the claims are not possible, and instead of copy + pasting the description from mainstream historiography it seems inclined towards the Revisionist argument.

Let's say that it is not remotely possible 5,000 people were cremated every day at Treblinka, and Revisionists are right. How would an AI create a response that describes the possibility of something impossible/did not happen? It would probably prefer to generate the more likely response, i.e. the Revisionist critique of the claims.

But like I said it's going to get better at detecting this stuff and copy+pasting the mainstream position as in the case with HBD.

First ask how much wood to cremate a body. Then ask how much wood to cremate 5,000 bodies - i.e. "hundreds of cords of wood."

"When the air could be breathed again, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies. By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel." (I recommend reading https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2011/10/holocaust-nazi-perspective/)

As far as I understand, burning a human body is an energy-positive process (quick googling: meat energy density is about 10MJ/kg, water heat of vaporization is about 2MJ/kg, humans are 60% water), so you only need extra fuel to start the fire and due to inefficiencies. Once you figure out how to cremate 5000 bodies at a time you definitely don't get the naive answer to the question you proposed.

The suggestion that cremations were burned in the open-air without fuel is of course completely absurd, but so it goes in Holocaust lore. You are not just burning the meat, you are trying to cremate the skeleton to ashes, which requires a prolonged period of extremely high heat. Cremation is not an energy-positive process.

By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel.

Is a perfect example of Holocaust mysticism. The statement "By means of a special process which Wirth had invented" is supposed to give credibility to the absurd claim. The "special process" was laying corpses on makeshift grates made with railroad rails and burned on open-air pyres.

But you can notice there is already a contradiction in the witness testimony. One says that the cremations were performed without the use of fuel (!) and the other just mentions that "dry branches" were used. Of course none of the methods attested to are remotely possible.

Here's another quick-and-dirty source:

Here's the morbid math: Cremating one corpse requires two to three hours and more than 1,800 degrees of heat

The energy from that is not coming from the body. It is a completely absurd claim but it's part-and-parcel for the sort of "witness testimony" you get when you try to account for the logistics for what is claimed.

You are not just burning the meat, you are trying to cremate the skeleton to ashes. Cremation is not an energy-positive process.

That's a "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" kind of argument. I'm pretty sure that turning bones to ashes only requires a certain temperature and is also an energy positive process by itself, or if not then a rounding error compared to the heat required to evaporate the water. You're welcome to look up the chemical processes involved, for me my back of the envelope calculations and some physics-related common sense provide convincing enough proof that cremation is in fact an energy-positive process, so your "multiply the wood amount by 5000" argument is nonsense.

But you can notice there is already a contradiction in the witness testimony.

I'm OK with assuming that the Nazi judge did not relay the boasting about the cremation process by the guy who he had shot in precise enough detail.

That's a "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" kind of argument.

It's pretty unbelievable that you make the claim that thousands of people could be cremated simultaneously without fuel (except to start the fire), and that the cremation would be net energy-positive. Then you accuse me of making a "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" argument. You are literally saying that the cremations were magical and the bodies were self-cremating.

Humanity has practiced cremation for millennia. Cremation is not net-energy positive. There are many studies and case studies, especially pertaining to the cremation of livestock during pandemics, and what you are claiming is a fairy tale. Revisionists have also studied cases where extremely hot house or car fires failed to cremate a body, the notion that a body is self-cremating once a temperature threshold is reached is completely asinine.

But just because I asked ChatGPT to weigh in since people are more likely to trust an AI to say the sky is blue than a Holocaust denier:

Is cremation net energy-positive?

The cremation process itself consumes energy, typically in the form of natural gas or propane, to heat the cremation chamber to the high temperatures required for cremation. The energy required to cremate a body can vary depending on the size of the body, the type of equipment used, and the efficiency of the cremation process. Some sources suggest that cremation can be energy-intensive, particularly if the equipment used is not well-maintained or operated efficiently. In general, cremation is considered to be an energy-intensive process, and it is not considered to be net energy-positive.

But doesn't the body-mass give off energy when it cremates? So couldn't it be cremated with its own stored energy?

The energy released during cremation is not sufficient to sustain the process. Cremation requires a significant external energy source, typically in the form of gas, propane, or coal, to reach the high temperatures necessary for complete combustion of human remains. The energy released by the body is consumed in the initial stages of the cremation process and is not enough to continue the process on its own.

How much additional external energy would be necessary for complete combustion of human remains?

The amount of external energy required for complete combustion of human remains depends on several factors, such as the size and weight of the body, the temperature of the cremation chamber, and the efficiency of the cremation equipment. On average, it takes about two to three hours to cremate a human body using a modern cremation furnace. The furnace typically operates at a temperature of about 1400-1800°C and requires a significant amount of fuel, such as propane or natural gas, to maintain these high temperatures. The total energy requirement will depend on the specific conditions and equipment used, but it is safe to say that a significant amount of external energy is necessary for complete combustion of human remains.

You have not provided an explanation for how 5,000 could have been cremated every single day, you are providing evidence of how completely absurd the official story is and how detached it is from reality.

The official story is that in a large scale process, the heat from the bodies themselves made the process far less energy intensive than that of civilian cremation.

If they needed 10 kg of coal to burn a body, in addition to say, 8-10 kilograms of fat contained in each body, that'd only have required the use of 10 tons for a thousand corpses, which is just 1/4 of a small coal hopper. (these days apparently up to 100 tons per car).

The transports had up to 150 victims per rail car. Supposed you needed 20 kg per corpse to burn one in an efficient furnace.

That implies 3 tons per victim rail car, so you'd perhaps need one railcar of coal per 15 wagons of victims.

That's not a logistical challenge - not for a country where up to half of rail capacity was used to move coal to generate power.

German coal production was ~250 million tons per year.

Ultimately, the credibility of that particular piece testimony does hinge on the question of whether it is possible for a meat-powered fire to generate enough heat to self-sustain once it gets started.

But let's actually do the math ourselves, instead of just parroting the arguments of ChatGPT, which is a language model which infamously has trouble telling you which of two numbers is larger unless you tell it to work through the problem step by step.

Enter the bomb calorimeter. It is a reasonably accurate way of measuring the energy content of various substances. Measurements using bomb calorimeters suggest that fat contains 38 - 39 kJ / g, proteins 15 - 18 kJ / g, and carbohydrates 22 - 25 kJ / g.

Humans are composed of approximately 62% water, 16% protein, 16% fat, 1% carbohydrates, and 6% other stuff (mostly minerals). For the cremation story to be plausible, let's say that the water would need to be raised to 100ºC (4.2 J / g / ºC) and then boiled (2260 J / g), and the inorganic compounds (call their specific heat also 4 J / g / ºC -- it's probably closer to 1, which is the specific heat of calcium carbonate, but as we'll see this doesn't really make much difference) raised to (let's say) 500ºC.

So for a 50 kg human, that's

  • 31 kg water: - 12 MJ to raise to 100ºC, 70MJ to actually boil

  • 8 kg protein - 132 MJ released from burning under ideal conditions

  • 8 kg fat - 308 MJ released from burning under ideal conditions

  • 500g carbohydrates - 12 MJ released from burning under ideal conditions

  • 3 kg other - 6 MJ to raise to 500ºC.

So that's about 450 MJ released by burning, of which about 90 MJ goes towards heating stuff and boiling water. That sure looks energy positive to me.

Sanity check -- a tea light is a 10g blob of paraffin wax, which has a very similar energy density to fat. So a tea light should release about 400 kJ of energy when burned, which means that a tea light should contain enough energy to boil off about 150 mL of water, or to raise a bit over a liter of water from room temperature to boiling, if all of the energy is absorbed in the water.

And, in fact, it is possible to boil water using tea lights. A tea light takes about 4 hours to burn fully. That video shows 17 tea lights burning for 8.5 minutes, which should release about 60% as much energy as is contained in a single tea light. It looks like that brought about 400ml of water to a boil, so the sanity check does in fact check out.

I really don't think that random british dude who is showing you how to use candles to boil water during a power failure is in on a global conspiracy to cover up a lack of genocide, but, just in case you think he is, this is an experiment you can try at home with your own materials.

Edit: clarity

I think securesignal's argument has massive holes elsewhere (even in the point under discussion, finding fuel in industrial quantities to burn bodies should not be a problem for a modern state) , but your argument is very theoretical.

I listen to true crime, and I never heard of a murderer burning a body without fuel. Usually it takes them a day of piling on wood on the corpse before it's gone. Is a steak spontaneously combustible? It would seem to have enough energy, yet I have never seen one burst into flames and keep burning if briefly exposed to fire.

I never heard of a murderer burning a body without fuel.

ah but this wasn't the claim! @SecureSignals's claim was that the cremation process was energy negative, which has shown not to be the case not only by @faul_sname's calculations but experimentally as well

also while SecureSignals seems to always be insinuating that 1 body was burned at a time... this is clearly not the case as claimed by... well everyone that isn't a holocaust denier

You have to dehydrate it first, but jerky is in fact flammable. We're not talking about a single body, we're talking about a pile of bodies with fuel and accelerants at the bottom.

SecureSignals keeps coming back to the assertion that "pile a bunch of bodies on a grate, put wood and accelerants below them, and ignite" is not a viable way to burn bodies, and that it is not viable because burning bodies is a strongly energy-negative process, as evidenced by normal cremations taking a lot of fuel. This would actually be a pretty good knock-down argument against the reliability of that testimony if burning bodies was in fact strongly energy-negative.

That jerky is 50% fat. And your theoretical argument claimed it would boil the water away, no need to remove it first. But ok, I'll grant it is possible within certain parameters and I learned something about jerky and the wick effect.

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So your contention is that it takes no fuel beyond body mass to perform a cremation?

Whether or not you can perform a cremation without additional fuel will depend on how much heat is lost to the environment (plus the question of achieving ignition in the first place). My contention is that body mass contains sufficient energy to perform a cremation. This is based on the following logic:

  1. Humans are made of meat

  2. Meat with a nontrivial fat percentage contains enough energy to boil all of the water in the meat.

  3. Meat without the water is called "jerky".

  4. Jerky is flammable.

Whether or not you can perform a cremation without additional fuel will depend on how much heat is lost to the environment

So you are not saying one way or another whether a cremation requires fuel? Can you cite me any case or example where the cremation of a carcass (livestock for example) did not require fuel to be cremated to ash?

Here's an example by the way of a cremation of a pig with a large amount of wood fuel. It did not achieve complete cremation.

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You are literally arguing against physics. Again, quick googling told me that: meat energy density is about 10MJ/kg, water heat of vaporization is about 2MJ/kg, humans are 60% water. I don't account for bones but I also don't account for fat and brains. Can you do basic math?

Your argument is that since a proper cremation of a single body requires a lot of energy, a mass cremation of 5000 bodies requires a proportionally prohibitive amount of energy. When I point out that it doesn't scale like that at all because of physics (not to mention that Nazis weren't interested in proper cremations), you make more arguments supporting that cremation of a single body requires a lot of energy.

Your argument is that since a proper cremation of a single body requires a lot of energy, a mass cremation of 5000 bodies requires a proportionally prohibitive amount of energy.

If the cremation of a single body requires a lot of external energy, then why wouldn't that scale with the cremation of 5000 bodies? It absolutely would. The external energy must have a source to sustain hours of cremation.

Your claims are literally absurd. But it's why witnesses thought it wasn't too big of a problem to say that little or no fuel was used, or particularly fat women were used as fuel. There are also witnesses who say that blood was flammable and used as fuel, but I think even you wouldn't fall for that one.

@johnfabian cited Rajchman's Treblinka memoirs. Here is what Rajchman claims in his memoirs:

“At one time we put up a roast beside a large grave, into which more than 250.000 corpses had been thrown. The roast was loaded as usual and lit in the evening. There was a strong wind, and the fire burned so intensely, that it spread to the large opened grave. The blood from a quarter of a million human beings went up in flame and burned until the evening of the following day.

All of the leading camp staff came to take a look at this wonder. They marveled at this fantastic fire. The blood rose to the surface of the ground and ignited like fuel.” (p. 119)

Pure fantasy. Just think that he witnessed these things but the OSI didn't get around to interviewing him until 1980, and his first memoir wasn't published until 2009.

Edit: There's also this laughable account from Rajchman showing the propaganda-motive for these tall tales:

“Reichman also said the Nazis had prepared a special incinerator in Treblinka for British Jews, who were to be deported under Adolf Hitler's masterplan for a Jewish-free Europe.

‘This was the incinerator for the British Jews,’ he said, pointing to a diagram of Treblinka. ‘The Germans planned to bring them there when they captured Britain. It was built in a very solid manner and could not be moved. It remained there until the end.’”

The mere notion that the Germans three months after Stalingrad would entertain hopes of defeating Great Britain and have all Jews of the island nation shipped over to Europe to be gassed is nothing else than laughable.

If the cremation of a single body requires a lot of external energy, then why wouldn't that scale with the cremation of 5000 bodies? It absolutely would.

Industrial processes when scaled up can be more efficient. Normal cremation process doesn't involve pushing a naked body into an extremely hot oven to be burned as fast and efficiently as possible.

Most of the people they were killing weren't starvation victims. Old people mostly, or very young, easily 15-20% body fat.

I'm probably not far off the mark to say the energy content of fat tissue is fairly near that of hydrocarbon fuel.. I'm not sure how much fat there is per unit of fat tissue, but I'd be unsurprised if it was say, 80%. So someone weighing 60 kg, with a 20% body fat ratio has 12 kg of fat tissue, perhaps 9.6 kgs of fat itself, which translates to 380 MJ of energy.

That's a fair bit of energy. Allegedly, people who aren't complete anorexics have enough energy in them to combust themselves.

The furnaces used were huge, thus kept the heat of the bodies that have already burned before in their brickwork.

Perhaps you can do some research and look around -surely some green zealots have come up with carbon debt caused by each corpse burned, we could derive the minimal energy needed from that.

The furnaces used were huge, thus kept the heat of the bodies that have already burned before in their brickwork.

There was no brickwork. The bodies were piled on outdoor fires because Treblinka like the other two camps did not have a crematorium with modern ovens. The plan was to bury the bodies and the plan changed only in 1943, but no crematoria were built. This was not an "industrial process", it was allegedly done with the most crude methods and none of the modern technology that were used for cremation in the concentration camp. All experience shows that these cremations require a huge amount of energy, and I continue to be surprised that so many people are claiming that the Treblinka cremations were the only cremations in human history that required no fuel. Why? "Industrial processes" or something.

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If the cremation of a single body requires a lot of external energy, then why wouldn't that scale with the cremation of 5000 bodies? It absolutely would. The external energy must have a source to sustain hours of cremation.

Have you considered leaving arguing your points to someone better intellectually equipped for that? Because the only thing you have achieved here was making me more sympathetic to SJWs who say that holocaust denialists are too stupid and impervious to logical arguments so instead of engaging them in a marketplace of ideas we should silence them lest they spread their nonsense to other very stupid people. I'm not trying to offend you, I'm honestly informing you about the result your arguments here have achieved.

Have you considered leaving arguing your points to someone better intellectually equipped for that?

Don't do this please.

That's rich coming from someone who is arguing that bodies are flammable and cremation is an energy-positive process, and that the cremations would have required no fuel. Even the informed anti-deniers do not make that argument, they would be embarrassed by your display. But you are so committed to believing witnesses you will believe them even when they make completely impossible claims.

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I didn't want to get sucked into this, and I'll bow out soon, but: they did have the industrial capacity and logistics to kill millions of russians, in combat and out, consuming among other things millions of cords of ammunition, so why does a similar, actually considerably easier, task, present insurmountable challenges in the case of jews ?

It's a good point, industrial ingenuity is a prominent feature of German culture. They certainly had the capacity to do it if they wanted to, which is why the methods attested to make no sense. The Germans were world leaders in chemistry and industry, as you pointed it. So how did they murder up to a million people in Treblinka?

It is said that they tricked up to a million Jews into entering bedroom-sized gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, where they were murdered using the exhaust from the engine of a captured Soviet tank. Although other concentration camps like Dachau had state-of-the-art cremation technology, Treblinka did not have any crematorium. So 750,000+ people were buried in under 5 acres (ChatGPT also said that was not possible by the way). Then, the Germans dug those people out and cremated them on makeshift grates made with railroad rails from March until August 1943. This is the mainstream claim.

Does that sound like German industrial prowess, or does it sound like wartime rumor from agitated peasants who know nothing about the science of execution or cremation? Exhaust from a Soviet tank engine? Really? Why would such a nonsensical weapon be used by the world leaders in chemistry for such a crucial task? They wouldn't have. The entire operation is nonsensical.

Urgh, the point is not about german industrial prowess, the russians also had an industry capable of killing millions of germans who shoot back, and were no slouches on murdering vast amounts of civilians either. Germans used the exhaust pipe execution for T4. Not getting into details of the camps, good day, I'm out.

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