ANNEX 1
COMPLETE LIST OF ALL REFERENCES TO THE TATTOOING OF CONCENTRATION INMATES AT NUREMBERG (13 NUREMBERG TRIALS, OVER 200,000 PAGES OF TRANSCRIPT, MILLIONS OF PAGES OF DOCUMENTS, AND THIS IS ALL THERE IS).
FIRST NUREMBERG TRIAL (IMT) vol. VIII, p. 317:
“COUNSELOR SMIRNOV: Do you have any proof that you were an inmate of this camp?
SCHMAGALEVSKAYA: I have the number which was tattooed on my arm.
COUNSELOR SMIRNOV: That is what the Oscwiesim inmates call the ‘visiting card’?
SCHMAGALEVSKAYA: Yes.”
[COMMENT: In a real trial, this would be called “ arguing a matter not in evidence”, i.e., before the possession of a “tattoo” could be accepted as “proof” that a witness was in a camp, a showing would have to be made that the Germans actually tattooed camp inmates. No proof of this contention was ever offered.]
NATIONAL MILITARY TRIALS; POHL TRIAL:
(included to show irrationality of trial evidence generally; this is the same trial that “proved” the existence of 10 steam chambers and 10 gas chambers in the same camp at the same time, NMT IV 1119-1152):
Opening Statements of the Prosecution and Defense : A. Extracts From the Opening Statement of the Prosecution: The SS Industries: Part 1", in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. 5: United States v. Oswald Pohl, et. al. (Case 4: 'Pohl Case'). District of Columbia: GPO, 1950. pp. 242-247:
“At Dachau and Mauthausen, human skin of dead prisoners was used to make lamp shades, saddles, riding britches, gloves, house slippers, and ladies' hand bags. Tattooed skin was particularly valued by the SS men .”
(Extracts From Testimony of Prosecution Witness Dr. Bernhard Lauber ", in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. 5: United States v. Oswald Pohl, et. al. (Case 4: 'Pohl Case'). District of Columbia: GPO, 1950. pp. 412-416.)
“Q. Did you receive a tattoo when you entered Auschwitz?
A. Yes. My number is 161374.
Q. Will you show the Tribunal your tattoo, please?
A. Certainly. (Witness rises, unbuttons shirt and bares fore arm to Court.)”
Extracts From Testimony of Prosecution Witness Dr. Victor Abend : Part 1", in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. 5: United States v. Oswald Pohl, et. al. (Case 4: 'Pohl Case'). District of Columbia: GPO, 1950. pp. 641-646:
“…The following day we went to be tattooed, again under severe beatings .
Q. Were you tattooed?
A. Yes. I have the number 160879.
Q. Do you know whether they tattooed inmates in other concentration camps or not?
A. Only at Auschwitz.
Q. In other words, any inmate who has a tattoo on his arm was an inmate at Auschwitz; is that right?
A. Yes. That is correct.”
(The following two items are, again, included to show the irrationality of the trial accusations generally)
Extracts From the Closing Statement of the Prosecution : Part 3", in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. 5: United States v. Oswald Pohl, et. al. (Case 4: 'Pohl Case'). District of Columbia: GPO, 1950. pp. 832-837:
“Another inmate, from Camp Buchenwald and Dora, gave the reason for the construction of the crematorium at Dora. For some time, the bodies of the inmates were hauled from Dora to Buchenwald for burning.
But it became quite embarrassing to the SS, he said, when the drunken drivers would lurch and careen over the highways spilling corpses out of the truck-beds. People on their way to church would stumble over the bodies. It obviously would not do to have these constant menaces to traffic and religious meditation and so a crematorium was built at Dora.
This witness regularly conducted large parties through the camp at Buchenwald. They weren't shown everything, he testified, but they were able to see a great deal with their own eyes. He himself showed the parties exhibits of shrunken skulls [sic] and tattooed skin…”
Judgement: B. Concurring Opinion by Judge Michael A. Musmanno : Treatment of Concentration Camp Inmates: Part 2", in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. 5: United States v. Oswald Pohl, et. al. (Case 4: 'Pohl Case'). District of Columbia: GPO, 1950. pp. 1088-1092.
“At times, when an inmate's death was decided upon, the camp commandant would inform him that on the following day he was to try to escape. In the camp office, the man's death already had been recorded "killed while attempting escape." The Austrian Consul General, Dr. Stiedler, was informed one day of the fate which awaited him the following day. Dr. Stiedler pleaded that he could not do this since he was a faithful Catholic, and condemned suicide. Nonetheless, the next day, while approaching a chain of guards, he was shot down. (Tr. p. 97.)
The witness, Josef Ackermann, who related the above incident, was an inmate first in Dachau, then in Buchenwald, and then in Nordhausen. At Buchenwald he served as physician's clerk in the pathological section, and was required to keep records of autopsies. The chief of the medical department in department [division] D, WVHA, Dr. Lolling, frequently wrote the director of the pathological section at Buchenwald: "I need immediately 10 entire skeletons, 12 skulls, or individual parts of the body, or we need some interesting bullet wounds." One day the camp physician, pointing to an inmate passing by, said to the witness:
"Dr. Ackerman, I would like to have this skull on my desk tomorrow." And then, according to the witness:
"The very same evening, the prisoner was ordered to report to the hospital and on the next day he was on my autopsy table and the skull was taken apart, and it was turned over to Dr. Hoven." (Tr. p. 940.)
One specialty of the pathological section of the Buchenwald concentration camp was to remove the skin of prisoners and tan it:
"Production was carried out by two ways, either it was put into a transparent form, or it was tanned so that the skin became tough, like leather." (Tr. p. 940.)
The inmate who carried tattooed pictures on his body walked a precarious path . He was immediately catalogued and his skin marked for the collection (after his death) of tattoos kept in the special museum in Berlin. Hunchbacks or other persons with a body structure of medical interest excited the anatomical and macabre avarice of half-crazed doctors who were not averse to killing to obtain the skeletons to incorporate into the collections of the SS doctors, or the display in the SS Medical Academy at Graz. (V/178, Do. 499-PS.)
Delving into the medieval past for ideas on torture and brutalities, devising schemes of their own for unique, sadistic practices on the body and soul of their fellowmen, the degenerate and power-crazed SS men, ever seeking some new, bizarre bestiality for their criminally warped imaginations, went to the jungle tribes of Africa for anatomical grotesquenesses not theretofore known in Europe. As Indians scalped their deceased foes certain African tribes bore away the decapitated heads of their fallen enemies, and by a certain process reduced them to the size of a doll’s head. A returned traveller from Africa
[COMMENT: Shrunken heads come from South America, not Africa. The shrunken head produced at Nuremberg was later found to be hundreds of years old, and originated from an anthropological museum. No forensic tests were ever performed during any of the trials.]
was taken into the pathological section to instruct the SS staff in the mysteries of skull shrinking [!], and the revolting hideous thing was done. Various heads were shrunk, and, according to the witness, the SS men liked to have these things on their writing desks in order to consider themselves important. (Tr. p. 943.)… »
NATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL – I.G. FARBEN TRIAL
Slave Labor-Count Three: E. Affidavits and Testimonies of Prosecution Witnesses : 2. Affidavit and Testimony of Norbert Wollheim: a. Affidavit", in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. VIII: United States v. Carl Krauch, et. al. (Case 6: 'IG Farben Case'). District of Columbia: GPO, 1952. pp. 589-592.
TRANSLATION OF DOCUMENT NI-9807
PROSECUTION EXHIBIT 1476
I, Norbert Wollheim, presently living at Wakenitzerstrasse 34 b, Luebeck, having been informed that I shall be subJect to punishment if I make a false statement, herewith testify under oath voluntarily and without duress: …
[Deletion]
3. Concentration camp Monowitz consisted of approximately 20 barracks at the time when I arrived there in March 1943. As I found later, they were all quite full. Hardly any inmate had a bed of his own. The total of inmates at that time was about 3 000 prisoners. We went to work for the first time in the IG plant already the day after we arrived, having all been registered and tattooed. My own prison number is 107,984.
[POSSIBLE CRIMINAL ORIGINS OF THE LEGEND]
“Slave Labor-Count Three: G. Affidavits and Testimonies of the Defense Witnesses: 6. Affidavit and Testimony of Fritz Schermuly, A German Convict Interned at Auschwitz Concentration Camp: b. Testimony of Fritz Schermuly: Part 1", in Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10. Vol. VIII: United States v. Carl Krauch, et. al. (Case 6: 'IG Farben Case'). District of Columbia: GPO, 1952. pp. 825-830.
“TESTIMONY OF FRITZ SCHERMULY BEFORE COMMISSIONER MULROY
DIRECT EXAMINATION
DR. SEIDL (counsel for defendant Duerrfeld): Witness, on 9/16/1947, you made an affidavit, Document Duerrfeld 402, Duerrfeld Exhibit 103, [Reproduced immediately above.] available to the defense. It was sworn before a notary in Munich on that same day ?
WITNESS SCHERMULY: Yes.
Q. Witness, are these statements made in that affidavit made by you voluntarily?
A. Yes, this affidavit was made voluntarily.
Q. And it was signed by you voluntarily, was it?
Q. In order to complete the record, would you please state your full name and the date of your birth?
A. I, Fritz Schermuly, was born on the 21st of July 1897, at Munich.
Q. I have a few supplemental questions to put to you, Witness. At the beginning of your affidavit, you state that after serving a term in prison for trade in narcotics you were sent to a concentration camp, Mauthausen, in November 1941 on preventive custody ?
Q. Had you been sentenced by another court in Germany before that ?
A. As far as I remember, I was sentenced in 1920 with 7 days imprisonment; 1923, 2 years and 6 months; and in 1930, 1 year; in 1931, 2 years and 9 months; and then afterwards I served my sentence in the camp.
[Deletion]
CROSS-EXAMINATION
MR. MINSKOFF: Mr. Witness, will you tell the court what your inmate number was that you have inscribed on your hand, on your arm?
A. 13955.It wasn't tattooed on my arm for one reason. Only Jews and foreigners had their arms tattooed. That did not apply to Reich Germans.
Q. You mean that did not apply to Aryan Reich Germans?
A. Well, there were some Germans who had themselves tattooed voluntarily, but none of them were forced to do that at Monowitz.
Q. Now, Mr. Witness, in your affidavit you mentioned that you served the term of imprisonment for trade in narcotics, and then were sent to the. concentration camp Mauthausen in November 1941. On your direct examination by Dr. Seidl, you elaborated upon your affidavit and mentioned several earlier convictions in 1920, and 1923, and I believe one in 1931. You also added that you had a green triangle, which is the criminal triangle. Now, Mr. Witness, just so the record will be complete, will you tell the court the first time you were convicted of a crime?
A. I believe in 1920.
Q. And will you tell the court what the nature of the crime was?
A. Because of theft.
Q. Mr. Witness, will you now tell the court the second time you were convicted of a crime?
A. The second time in 1923, beginning of 1923, April or so, because of theft, and because of receiving.
Q. Now, Mr. Witness, I know this is some time back, but isn't it a fact that you were convicted of a crime in May 1922 ?
A. Quite possible, but I can't remember it now. Yes, I think 2 months; I think so, yes.
Q. And that was also for theft ?
A. Yes, yes, theft, that is right.
Q. And do you recall again in 1922, the following month, being convicted for theft?
A. Yes. Well, that concerned one trial. As far as I remember, that was all one trial; 2 months.
Q. Now, Mr. Witness, the 1920 conviction, and the May 1922 convictions, and the June 1922 conviction, were three separate convictions with three separate sentences. Now do you not recall that at all at the present time ?
A. I only know that I was imprisoned for 2 months. It may have been connected with the other sentence, but I don't know.
DR. SEIDL: Mr. Commissioner, I don't want to object to that question; I am not sure whether the translation came through. He said that there was one trial but that a number of deeds were considered at the same time during that one trial. Perhaps the prosecutor will repeat his question.
MR. MINSKOFF: I w ill be glad to. Mr. Witness, will you try to recall whether it is a fact or not that after the 1920 conviction which you spoke of, there were two convictions in 1922, 1 month apart, and both for theft, and both involved separate sentences
A. Yes, I had two sentences, but only one sentence was served by me but there were two actual trials connected in one sentence, two procedures connected in one sentence; that is quite possible, yes.
Q. Alright. Mr. Witness, now the next time you were convicted of a crime you state was 1923, in May.
A. Yes, beginning of 1923.
Q. And what was the nature of that crime ?
A. That was receiving, theft, and burglary; all together, a sentence of 3 years.
Q. Perhaps there is a little confusion here, Mr. Witness. I think you are a little bit ahead of me on your dates. I think you are thinking about July 1923. Now in May 1923, do you recall whether you were convicted of a crime of trading in gold and silver and platinum, on the 14 of May 1923 [5/14/1923]?
A. That was, yes, yes, that concerned that matter; 8 days or something I am not quite sure. That is quite possible, yes. That was some illegal trading; yes.
Q. And then the following month, Mr. Witness, do you recall being convicted of grand larceny?
A. Yes; 2 years and 6 months.
Q. And also 5 years loss of civil rights.
A. Five years, yes.
Continued: pp. 830-832.
Q. And then, Mr. Witness, on the second of July 1923 were you convicted of another crime?
A. That was receiving, yes.
Q. That was receiving stolen goods ?
Q. Now, Mr. Witness, when was the next time that you were convicted of a crime?
A. Nineteen-thirty, I think.
Q. And what was the nature of that crime ?
A. Receiving stolen goods.”
[COMMENT: The above cross-examination proves, if nothing else, that the Americans had no interest in proving the truth of the tattooing accusation or even in finding out more about it, rather implying that they knew perfectly well that it was not true.]
ANNEX 2
EXCERPTS FROM GERMAN PAPERBACK EDITION OF
IBM AND THE HOLOCAUST BY EDWIN BLACK.
In August 1943, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz. He was among a group of 400 inmates, mostly Jews.
First, a doctor examined him briefly to determine his fitness for work. His physical information was noted on a medical record. Second, his full prisoner registration was completed with all personal details. Third his name was checked against the indices of the Political Section to see if he would be subjected to special punishment.
Finally, he was registered in the Labor Assignment Office and assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673. The five-digit Hollerith number was part of a custom punch card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. The Polish timber merchant’s punch card number would follow him from labor assignment to labor assignment as Hollerith systems tracked him and his availability for work, and reported it to the central inmate file eventually kept at Department DII.
Department DII of the SS Economics Administration in Oranienburg oversaw all camp salve labor assignments, utilizing elaborate IBM systems.
Later in the summer of 1943, the Polish timber merchant’s same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm .
Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed. Tattoos, however, quickly evolved at Auschwitz. Soon, they bore no further relation to Hollerith compatibility for one reason: the Hollerith number was designed to trace a working inmate – not a dead one. Once the daily death rate at Auschwitz climbed, Hollerith-based numbering simply became outmoded. Soon, ad hoc numbering systems were inaugurated at Auschwitz. Various number ranges, often with letter attached, were assigned to prisoners in ascending sequence. Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed cruel experiments, tattooed his own distinct number series on ‘patients’. Tattoo numbering schemes ultimately took on a chaotic incongruity all its own as an internal Auschwitz-specific identification system.
However, Hollerith numbers remained the chief method Berlin employed to centrally identify and track prisoners at Auschwitz. For example, in late 1943, some 6,500 healthy, working Jews were ordered to the gas chamber by the SS. But their murder was delayed for two days as the Political Section meticulously checked each of their numbers against the Section’s own card index.
The Section was under orders to temporarily reprieve any Jews with traces of Aryan parentage. Sigismund Gajda was another Auschwitz inmate processed by the Hollerith system. Born in Kielce, Poland, Gajda was about 40 years of age when on f May 18. 1943, he arrived at Auschwitz. A plain paper form, labeled “Personal Inmate Card’, listed all of Gajda’s personal information. He professed Roman Catholicism, had two children, and his work skill was marked ‘mechanic’. The reverse side of his Personal Inmate Card listed nine previous work assignments. Once Gajda’s card was processed by IBM equipment, a large indicia in typical Nazi Gothic script was rubber-stamped at the bottom: ‘Hollerith erfasst’, or ‘Hollerith registered’.
Indeed, that designation was stamped in large letters on hundreds of thousands of processed Personal Inmate Cards at camps all across Europe. The Extermination by Labor campaign itself depended upon specially designed IBM systems that matched worker skills and locations with labor needs across Nazi-dominated Europe. Once the prisoner was too exhausted to work, he was murdered by gas or bullet. Exterminated workers were coded ‘six’ in the IBM system. The Polish timber merchant’s Hollerith tattoo, Sigismund Gajda’s inmate form, and the victimization of millions more at Auschwitz live on as dark icons of IBM’s conscious 12-year alliance with Nazi Germany.
IBM’s custom-designed prisoner-tracking Hollerith punch card equipment allowed the Nazis to efficiently manage the hundreds of concentration camps and sub-camps throughout Europe, as well as the millions who passed through them.
Auschwitz’s camp code in the IBM tabulation system was 001. Nearly every Nazi concentration camp operated a Hollerith Department known as the Hollerith Abeilung. The three-part Hollerith system of paper forms, punch cards and processing machines varied form camp to camp and from year to year, depending upon conditions.
In some camps, such as Dachau and Storkow, as many as two dozen IBM sorters, tabulators and printers were installed. Other facilities operated punchers only, and submitted their cards to central locations such as Mauthausen or Berlin.
In some camps, such as Stutfhoff, the plain paper forms were coded and processed elsewhere. Hollerith activity, whether paper, punching or processing, were frequently – but not always – located within the camp itself, consigned to a special bureau called the Labor Assignment Office, known in German as the Arbietseinsatz. The Arbeitseinsatz issued the all-important life-sustaining daily work assignments, and processed all inmates cards and labor transfer rosters. IBM did not sell any of its punch card machines to Nazi Germany. The equipment was leased by the moth. Each month, often more frequently, authorized repairmen, working directly for or trained by IBM, serviced the machines on-site – whether in the midst of Berlin or a concentration camp.
In addition, all spare parts were supplied by IBM factories located throughout Europe Of course, the billions of punch cards, continually devoured by the machines, available exclusively through IBM, were extra. IBM’s extensive technological support for Hitler’s conquest of Europe and genocide against the Jews was extensively documented in my book, IBM and the Holocaust, published in February 2001 and updated in a paperback edition.
In March of this year, the Village Voice broke exclusive new details of a special IBM wartime subsidiary set up in Poland by IBM’s New York headquarters shortly after Hitler’s 19398 invasion. In 1939, America had not entered the war, and it was still legal to trade with Nazi Germany. IBM’s new Polish subsidiary, Watson Business Machines, helped Germany automate the rape of Poland. The subsidiary was named for its president Thomas J. Watson. Central to the Nazi effort was massive 500-man Hollerith Gruppe, installed in a looming brown building at 2 Murnerstrasse in Krakow. The Hollerith Gruppe of the Nazi Statistical Office crunched all the numbers of plunder and genocide that allowed the Nazis to systematically starve the Jews, mete them out of the ghettos and then transport them to either work camps or death camps.
The trains running to Auschwitz were tracked by a special-guarded IBM customer site facility at 22 Pawia in Krakow. The millions of punch cards the Nazis in Poland required were obtained exclusively from IBM, including one company print shop at 5 Rymarska Street across the street from the Warsaw Ghetto. The entire Polish subsidiary was overseen by an IBM administrative facility at 24 Kreuz in Warsaw. The exact address and equipment arrays of the key IBM offices and customer sites in Nazi-occupied Poland have been discovered. But no one has ever been able to locate an IBM facility at, or even near, Auschwitz.
Until now. Auschwitz chief archivist Piotr Setkiewicz finally pinpointed the first such IBM customer site. The newly unearthed IBM customer site was a huge Hollerith Büro. It was situated in the I.G. Farben factory complex, housed in Barracks 18, next to German Civil Worker Camp 7, about two kilometers from Auschwitz III, also known at Monowitz Concentration Camp. Auschwitz’ Setkiewicz explains, ‘The Hollerith office at IG Farben in Monowitz used the IBM machines as a system of computerization of civil and slave labor resources. This gave Farben the opportunity to identity people with certain skills, primarily skills needed for the construction of certain buildings in Monowitz.
By way of background, what most people call ‘Auschwitz’ was actually a sprawling hell comprised of three concentration camps, surrounded by some 40 sub-camps, numerous factories and a collection of farms in a surrounding captive commercial zone. The original Auschwitz became known simply as Auschwitz I, and functioned as a diversified camp for transit, labor and detention. Auschwitz II, also called Birkenau, became the infamous extermination center, operating gas chambers and ovens. Nearby Auschwitz III, known at Monowitz, existed primarily as a slave labor Camp. Monowitz is where IBM’s bustling customer site functioned.
Many of the long-known paper printers forms stamped Hollerith ersfasst, or ‘registered by Hollerith’, indicated the prisoners were from Auschwitz III, that is, Monowitz. Now Auschwitz archivist Setkiewicz has also discovered about 100 Hollerith machine summary printouts of Monowitz prisoner assignments and details generated by the by I.G. Farben customer site. For example, Alexander Kuciel, born August 12, 1889, was in 1944 deployed as a slave carpenter, skill coded 01456, and his Hollerith printout is marked ‘Sch/P’ the Reich abbreviation for Schutzhäftling/Pole. Schutzhäftling/Pole means ‘Polish political prisoner’. The giant Farben facilities also known as ‘I.G. Werk Auschwitz’, maintained two Hollerith Büro staff contacts, Herr Hirsch and Herr Husch [deletion].
Comparison of the new printouts to other typical camp cards show the Monowitz systems were customized for the specific coding Farben needed to process the thousands of slave workers who labored and died there. The machines were probably also used to manage and develop the manufacturing processes and ordinary business applications. The machines almost certainly did not maintain extermination totals, which were calculated as ‘evacuations’ by the Hollerith Gruppe in Krakow. At press time, the diverse Farben codes and range of machines used are still being studied. It is not known many many additional IBM customer sites researchers will discover in the cold ashes of the expansive commercial zone.
A Hollerith Büro, such at the one at Auschwitz II, was larger than a typical mechanized concentration camp Hollerith Department. A Büro was generally y comprised of more than a dozen punching machines, a sorter and one tabulator. Leon Krzemieniecki as a compusory worker who operated a tabulator at the IBM customer site at the Polish railways office in Krakow that kept track of trains going to and from Auschwitz.
He recalls, “I know that trains were constantly going from Krakow to Ausschwitz -- not only passenger trains, but cargo trains as well. Krzemieneicki, who worked for two years with IBM puncher, card sorters and tabulators, estimates that a punch card operation for so large a manufacturing complex as Farben ‘would probably require at least two high-speed tabulators, four sorters, and perhaps 20 punchers...”
Edwin Black is the author of IBM and the Holocaust, The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (Crown Publishers 2001 and Three Rivers Press 2002). This article is drawn from his just released and updated German paperback edition. Information relating to the new Auschwitz discovery will be appended to his English language editions at the next reprinting…
ANNEX 3
EXCHANGE OF E-MAIL MESSAGES BETWEEN CARLOS PORTER AND PROMINENT AUSCHWITZ RESEARCHER BETWEEN JANUARY 26 AND 28, 2004.
(The researcher began by stating that there were no German documents mentioning the practice.)
RESEARCHER: Number 32407 was assigned on 23 April (Jewish transport from Slovakia). According to T. Iwaszko, the numbers were not tattooed number by number, rather, all the figures were tattooed simultaneously by means of a suitable machine [!], therefore the 30 seconds referred to in the testimony do not seem improbable to me [!]. On the contrary, it seems improbable to me that every tattoo should take 10 minutes. In this case, the tattooing of the numbers on the hundreds of inmates of every transport would have taken a very long time.
CARLOS PORTER: No, tattoos aren’t done this way, and if they were, there would be documents.
RESEARCHER: It seems very improbable to me that, in a camp like Auschwitz, in which thousands of tattoos were performed [!], there did not exist a suitable machine in which it was possible to enter the number (as in a date stamp) [!] and perform the tattoo in several tenths of a second… To solve the problem, it would be necessary to find the device used to perform the tattoos, but I have never seen it, not even in a photograph. [!]
CARLOS PORTER: You can’t compare it with a date stamp, envelopes don’t get infected with diseases. The dates, the stamps, don’t get contaminated. Doing a tattoo is almost like a minor surgical operation. It’s like the famous gas chambers. You have to begin by asking: what is a tattoo, and how does it work? How is tattooing normally performed?
RESEARCHER : The description by T. Iwaszko is very exact,
[COMMENT: OK, so what kind of mechanism did it employ?]
so that one may suppose [!] that he has seen the instrument in question or the description is based on a detailed testimony. In any case I do not consider it very important.
COMMENT ON THE ABOVE BY CARLOS PORTER: Either that or it is all lies. Note the circular reasoning in the above. Compare: “Millions of people were gassed at Auschwitz; therefore the gassings must have been possible; therefore the gas chambers existed.” When you prove that this is impossible, people reply: “It is not very important.”
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