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Letter Sent to Adelaide Institute
September 2, 1996
Part 2 of 5


The Plans

As for my next point, the plans themselves, your reply boils down to, quote, "so what?", unquote. I think your failure to answer speaks for itself. Allow me to get more specific, dissecting your non-answer line-by-line:

We had no problem in concluding that these plans do not prove that the mortuaries were converted into homicidal gas chambers.

Why not?

I cannot accept your argument, Mr McCarthy, that at the architects' trial in Austria, the prosecution could not properly read these plans 'of genocide'.

I don't believe that these plans had been found and recognized as significant at that trial. Anyway I didn't raise that argument, so this is a strawman.

Plans speak for themselves -

Rhetoric.

unless, of course, we wish to read into them a function which the architects never contemplated.

Rhetoric.

I am happy to say that Professor Robert-Jan van Pelt has also advised me that his book on Auschwitz, co-writen [sic] with Deborah Dwork: 'Auschwitz: 1270 to the present', to be published in August 1996, has reproduced these blueprints.

Irrelevant to my question.

Unfortunatley [sic], Mr McCarthy, these plans do not prove to me that a mortuary was turned into a homicidal gas chamber.

Why not?

What is visible on the plans should speak for itself.

Rhetoric.

Pressac's commentary cannot prove that either. For example, statements such as: 'a chute was replaced by stairs' or 'the doors were changed from opening inward to outward, airtight doors with a peep-hole were installed', do not prove anything.

If his analysis is backed up by the plans themselves, which it of course is, and if his analysis is reasonable and solid, which it is, then his analysis does its job. It demonstrates to my satisfaction that the room in question, as of December 1942, was not a morgue. It certainly throws the ball back into your court. After Pressac, you and all other revisionists must provide a satisfactory explanation of these plans.

You must explain why the corpse-chute was converted into stairs. Obviously the Nazis felt that it would be more convenient for the "corpses" to walk into the "morgue." How do you resolve this paradox?

You must explain why the airtight doors were installed, with a peephole and third-of-an-inch-thick glass. Morgues don't need airtight doors, and they certainly don't need thick, unbreakable glass in their peepholes. How do you resolve this paradox?

You have explained none of this. Your "explanation" is, in full:

So what, Mr McCarthy?

The fact is that Pressac has presented a chain of reasoning, backed up with reproductions of his primary evidence. If you find fault with his evidence, you may explain what is wrong with it. If you find fault with his reasoning, you may explain which links in the chain you find to be weak, and why.

But "so what?" and "I cannot accept your argument" attack neither evidence nor reasoning, and these are non-responses to Pressac's case. As are your later digressions: the exhaust system (another strawman) and Shermer's "convergence theory" (irrelevant to straightforward proof of a simple concept).


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