re: #76 iossarian

Is it fair to say that people weren’t sure exactly where the graves and remains were located though?

I agree that isn’t the same thing as doubting the existence of the graves.

Oh, sure. It’s the injection of “doubt” where there was none that pisses me off. It basically gives a cart blanche for prior denial (“So, there was doubt, we were right!”). The simple fact is that ~800,000 people entered the camp and never left, this is amply documented; the witnesses among the Nazis, survivors and bystanders all testified about extermination; the post-war investigation found lots of remains, including a thick layer of ashes between Treblinka I and Treblinka II. That the exact number of graves or their exact borders are not known is neither here, nor there.

Also, note that strictly speaking this is not a stake through denial’s heart. As I pointed out, the same results were obtained in Belzec, Chelmno and Sobibor, which didn’t sway the deniers. These finds won’t sway them too, since by “graves found” it is not meant that 800,000 corpses were found - those were incinerated and ashes scattered. The pits were found, along with some remains. It’s with the evidence enumerated above that this find is significant. Without this evidence we wouldn’t know how many people died there or who they were.