User:Ealdgyth/Holocaust in Poland audit

From WikiProjectMed
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The Holocaust in Poland:

  1. "In the 1931 Polish national census, only 12 percent of Jews declared Polish as their first language, while 79 percent listed Yiddish and the remaining 9 percent Hebrew as their mother tongue." is sourced to the primary source - the 1931 census. This, however, is putting out something without context. There are sources that talk about this and contextualize it (in fact, the source for the sentence right before this) but instead we get it "only 12 percent" which is editorializing. Heller On the Edge of Destruction discusses the language issue on pages 66-69, and comes to the conclusion that most of the Jewish upper classes and middle classes spoke Polish, whether or not they also spoke Yiddish and Hebrew. Heller also concludes that many lower class Jews were able to communicate in Polish, although they probably only used it as a second language, not their first.
    This is still in the article. MOst of it was added [Special:Diff/812392510 with this edit in 2017 by Poeticbent]
  2. "The vast majority of Polish Jews were a "visible minority" by modern standards, distinguishable by language, behavior, and appearance." is sourced to On the Edge of Destruction p. 65. However - nowhere on page 65 is the phrase "visible minority" nor does it state anything about behavior or language on that page. The gist of page 65 is that the majority of Polish Jews were "distinctive in culture" - but that culture is not defined in these terms. Also not brought out in the wiki article is that the process of assimilation of the Polish Jews was accelerating .. they were becoming more like the surrounding Poles and this process was becoming faster than in the past -- for the period between WWI and WWII. Nothing on the page, however, supports the "by modern standards" statement.
    This is still in the article - it was added in [Special:Diff/283227950 this edit in 2009] by Poeticbent, who however used a different source - this one (link to wikilibrary card access) which on page 24 has this statement "Jews in Poland at that time constituted what nowadays would be called a 'visible minority'," which does not support the "vast majority" nor the "by modern standards" (and is, incidentally, a too close paraphrase of the original source!)
  3. "In the labour market of many cities and towns, including Poland's provincial capitals, the presence of such a large, mostly non-acculturated minority" is sourced again to Heller p. 65. There is nothing on that page about labor markets or such.
    This has disappeared, thankfully.
  4. "Polish nationals account for the majority of rescuers with the title of Righteous Among the Nations, as honored by Yad Vashem." however, Yad Vashem makes the point here that "The numbers of Righteous are not necessarily an indication of the actual number of rescuers in each country, but reflect the cases that were made available to Yad Vashem." and "Before drawing any statistical conclusions about the proportions between different countries, one should bear in mind that although the Holocaust was a global and total attempt to annihilate the Jews all over occupied Europe, there were important differences between countries – differences in the number of Jews, the implementation of the Final Solution, the type of German or other administration, the historical backdrop, the makeup of the Jewish community, Germany’s attitude to the local population and the extent of danger to those who helped Jews, and a multitude of other factors that influenced the disposition and attitudes of local populations and the feasibility of rescue." So just citing the fact that Polish Righteous are the biggest is a bit misleading without the further context.
    This has been removed
  5. "In his work on Warsaw's Jews, Paulsson demonstrates that despite the much harsher conditions, Warsaw's Polish citizens managed to support and hide the same percentage of Jews as did the citizens of cities in reportedly safer German-occupied countries of Western Europe." is sourced to [https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8353 a book review published on h-net, which is not exactly the highest quality source .... John Radzilowski is at least a historian, but no where in the review can I find a statement that supports "managed to support and hide the same percentage of Jews as did the citizens of cities in reportedly safer German-occupied countries of Western Europe" - the closest is "Warsaw, despite an extremely harsh occupation, compares favorably to Holland and even Denmark in the record of hiding Jews." which is not quite supportive of the sweeping statement in our article.
    This is now "In his work on Warsaw's Jews, Paulsson demonstrates that under much harsher conditions of the occupation, Warsaw's Polish citizens managed to support and hide a comparable percentage of Jews as the citizens of Western countries such as Holland or Denmark." but is still sourced to the h-net review, which arguably doesn't match the required sourcing standards - it would make more sense to ... use Paulsson's work itself rather than filtering it through an website review
  6. "Over 700 Polish Righteous among the Nations received that recognition posthumously, having been murdered by the Germans for aiding or sheltering their Jewish neighbors." is sourced to an archived document from this personal site.. which appears to be authored by Terese Pencak Schwartz, not sure how that site is a reliable source.
    Well, this is still here, but it's now sourced to " Chefer, Chaim (2007), "Righteous of the World: List of 700 Polish citizens killed while helping Jews During the Holocaust." Internet Archive." with the website given as https://web.archive.org/web/20071010014718/http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/list.htm. But the publisher isn't "internet archive" it's still www.holocaustforgotten.com which is now a dead website. [Special:Diff/235059034 It was added in 2008].
  7. "About a fifth of Poland's prewar population perished." is sourced to here which is .... the be made clearer in our article that about half the total population losses were Jewish victims.
    Still there, still doesn't point out that half the losses were Jewish (and it also doesn't make it clear that 1 million of the 6 million that Piotrowski is counting were the result of Soviet activities, not Nazi) While not utterly wrong here, the lack of explanation and the fact that it's in an article on the Holocaust gives the implication that all the Polish losses listed were due to the Holocaust, which is not strictly the fact. (The diff for this addition is particularly knarly - [Special:Diff/794933161 here's the diff that "Who Wrote That" gives for most of this] but there is a LOT of stuff going on in this so I'm not sure that's the correct diff)
  8. "Given the severity of the German measures designed to prevent this occurrence, the survival rate among the Jewish fugitives was relatively high and by far, the individuals who circumvented deportation were the most successful." is sourced to two sources - this book review by Timothy Snyder in the New York Review of Books and this article by Paulsson. Nothing in either source supports the first phrase "Given the severity of the German measures designed to prevent this occurrence" (we'll leave aside that I'm unclear what "this occurrence refers to since the previous (and only) sentence in the paragraph is about hiding children in convents) and the next part is also not clearly related to the previous thoughts - are these fugitives ... fugitives from the ghettos? Or fugitives who fled to the Soviet Union? The last part is again, not supported by either of the sources given - neither source talks about fugitives vs. non-fugitive survival rates... so ... what's this supposed to be sourced to or discussing?
    The sentence is still there (although moved) but the Snyder book review is removed as a source but has been replaced with Lukas 1989 (2013 edition) p. 13. I've got access to the 1989 edition through internet archive here which is problematic for a number of reasons - Lukas' numbers are not generally accepted. He admits as much right here "Recent research suggest that a million Poles were involved, but some estimates go as high as three million. My own research puts the figure much higher than is customarily accepted." I'm still not seeing where this conclusion "given the severity of the German measures... the survival rate among the Jewish fugitives was relatively high and by far, the individuals who circumvented deportation were the most successful." Nothing on page 13 of Lukas says anything about circumventing deportation. NOr can I find this in Paulsson.
  9. "Historian Richard C. Lukas(source for the 3 million figure is here) gives an estimate as high as three million Polish helpers; an estimate similar to those cited by other authors. The part from "an estimate similar to those cited by other authors." gives two sources - handily the first gives a quote from the source also. The first is Smith's Moral Geographies ... and the quote is "It has been estimated that a million or more Poles were involved in helping Jews" which flatly contradicts the "three million helpers" statement. The second source given is Lukas again... which can't support the "given by other authors" part of the statement.
    This is still in the article. The edit was added in [Special:Diff/826962453 this diff in 2018 by Nihil novi] with the original edit giving this survival story introduction, this book that was self-published (Xlibris is a self-publishing outfit), the Moral Geographies book from above (which isn't by a historian of the Holocaust - it's topics are given as "social justice, human geography, enviromental ethics" etc) which still only says "Nevertheless, it has been estimated that a million or more Poles were invovled in helping Jews" (gives Polanski 1989: 240 and Lukas 1997: 150 as the sources) which does not support the 3 million figure, and Lukas 1989. Using Lukas here is obviously NOT a "cited by other authors" thing.
  10. "The Polish Government in Exile was the first (in November 1942)" is sourced to the primary document that the Polish Government in Exile put out. This document cannot be used to source that this was the first time a government brought up publicly the existence of the extermination of the Jews.
    Well, this now has a "better source needed" tag on it. I guess that's progress?
  11. "Once the ghettos were sealed off from the outside, death by starvation and disease became rampant, alleviated only by the smuggling of food and medicine by Polish gentile volunteers, in what was described by Ringelblum as "one of the finest pages in the history between the two peoples". - this is sourced to Ringelblum's work ... which dates to the 1940s (as Ringelblum was one of the Jews detained in the Warsaw Ghetto ... who died before the end of the war). While Ringelblum's work is important, it's definitely out of date and should be treated as a primary soure, not a secondary one. Also - "alleviated only by the smuggling of food and medicine by Polish gentile volunteers" .... while true, is not the complete story. There were plenty of Jewish smugglers involved in the movement of food and supplies into the ghettos and not all the smugglers (of any ethnicitiy) were motivated by altruism - there were plenty of them out to make money too. I would also suggest that the quote is probably undue - Ringelblum in other places is rather scathing towards both Jewish and Polish smugglers so it's kinda cherry picking to only highlight his praise.
    This is still in the article. It was added in [Special:Diff/791174510 this diff from 2017 by Poeticbent] All the issues above remain.
  12. "Initially, the Jews were legally banned from baking bread;" is sourced to this source. Marek Edelman was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and as such, he's a primary source. It is unclear if the regulation forbidding Jews to bake bread only applied to the Warsaw Ghetto or across the General Government or across all of occupied Poland.... Edelman's account isn't clear. This is why you use secondary sources, not primary sources - because historians understand how to use the primary sources ... we are not historians, and we shouldn't be interpreting primary sources in this manner.
    This was fixed by Volunteer Marek in Jan 2022. Yay!
  13. "Also during Operation Barbarossa, the SS had recruited collaborationist auxiliary police from among Soviet nationals." is sourced to two sources - Poland's Holocaust and 'Trawniki' from the US Holocaust Museum. It should be noted that "Soviet nationals" is somewhat misleading - there were also some Polish citizens of German descent, as well as people from the Baltic states (who were considered Soviet nationals only by the Soviet government). Likewise, they are "auxiliary police" only because they were put under the control of part of the SS that also did police duties - these men were primarily death camp guards, and only secondarily did concentration camp guard duty and ghetto liquidation duty.
    This was partially addressed by VM in Jan 2022 with [Special:Diff/1066304644 this edit] but it still has issues (which VM noted) of using sources that discuss the "Trawniki men" (i.e. death camp guards basically) as auxiliary police, so it's still not correct.
  14. " herding them into makeshift ghettos, and forcing them into slave labor." is sourced to Jewish Forced Labor which supports the "forcing them into forced labor" ... but only for the General Government, not the entirety of pre-war Poland. Nor does this source support the "herding them into makeshift ghettos". I'll also point out that this statement in the book is for "through the end of 1940" which is a bit of a stretch from the chronology of the article. This is an example of stretching information that is sourced ... to cover more than it should. Strictly speaking, the source given only supports that the 700,000 Jews in the General Government were put to work in both ghetto based and outside the ghetto work projects.
    Still in the article. This particular sentence is a total mess on "Who Wrote This" practically every word in it was added by a different editor, so no clue who finally assembled this with the source.
  15. "Most ghettos were set up in cities and towns where Jewish life was already well organized. For logistical reasons, the Jewish communities in settlements without railway connections in occupied Poland were dissolved." is sourced to The Holocaust Chronicle which does not support anything in the wiki article.
    This is still in the article, although VM did remove the non-supporting source and tag it for needing a source with [Special:Diff/1064923071 this edit] in Jan 2022
  16. This source, which appears to be a Danish site for educators. the page is used to source:
    1. "The food aid was completely dependent on the SS." This is kinda supported - the source says "The food supply was completely dependent on the good will and possibilities of the Germans", which is not quite the same as being dependent on the SS.
    2. "they were sealed off from the general public in an unsustainable manner" is ... mostly supported, although the source makes it clear that the sealing of the ghettos wasn't finished until late in 1941 in some places, but our article implies that the ghettos were all sealed within the first year and a half, which is a slight stretch, but not horrid
    3. "The most prominent ghettos were thus temporarily stabilized through the production of goods needed at the front," sort of supported, although the source does not talk about "most prominent ghettos" as being the the only ones stabilized (which is the implication of our article)
    These are still in the article still with the less-than stellar sourcing and the ... less than perfect sourcing support. The first two bits were added in 2016 by Poeticbent with [Special:Diff/748622608 this edit] and the last was added, also by Poeticbent, in 2017 with [Special:Diff/791174510 this edit]
  17. "In December 1939 around 100 Jews were shot by Wehrmacht soldiers and gendarmes at Kolo" is sourced to this source which is just a primary account of the shooting. One - why is this shooting highlighted? And it is not clear who the gendarmes were - the article text seems to imply that they were part of the Wehrmacht but one of the witness statements implies that the gendarmes were local - it isn't clear if they were Polish or Volksdeutsch or something else. It's also not clear who did the supplementary text here - who's saying the Wehrmacht was involved? Is this some subject matter expert? The entry for Kolo in the Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos doesn't mention any shooting in 1939...we should be using secondary sources, not primary sources for this information.
    This is still in the article. It was added in June 2019 by Chumchum7 with [Special:Diff/900372922 this edit]
  18. "In what became known as the "Holocaust by bullets", the German police battalions (Orpo), SiPo, Waffen-SS, and special-task Einsatzgruppen, along with Ukrainian and Lithuanian auxiliaries, operated behind front lines, systematically shooting tens of thousands of men, women, and children, the Wehrmacht also participated in many aspects of the holocaust by bullets." is sourced to this US Holocaust Museum page. The problem here isn't so much sourcing as ... the main locations of the "Holocaust of bullets" were not within pre-war Poland. The vast majority of the shootings of Jews after Barbarossa took place in Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states, Russia, and other parts of the Soviet Union - so why is this being presented at length without making it clear that it mostly didn't happen in Poland?
    Still in and still misleading. Added in 2017 in [Special:Diff/791174510 this edit] by Poeticbent.
  19. "Because of sanitation concerns, the corpses of people who had died as a result of starvation and mistreatment were buried in mass graves in the tens of thousands" is sourced to this source (I believe that pages 6 and 7 are intended as the source, but that isn't stated in the citation) but the first part "Because of sanitation concerns" is not supported. Our article is also unclear - is it that there are tens of thousands of mass graves? Or tens of thousands of victims? And where is our article thinking these graves are - just in Poland or throughout the Eastern European areas occupied by Germany in WWII? There is another problem in that the source is covering the entire area of German-occupied Eastern Europe - and it doesn't discuss any specific numbers for Poland at all - so it's unclear if it does support any way of quantifying the number of mass graves in Poland.
    Still in the article and still misleading. Added with [Special:Diff/749493550 this edit] in 2016 by Poeticbent
  20. "in June 1942 the Polish National Council's Samuel Zygelbaum reported that these had murdered 35,000 Jews in Lodz alone.[57] He also reported that Gestapo agents were routinely dragging Jews out of their homes and shooting them on the street in broad daylight." is sourced to the original JTA report from 1942 - why are we using a primary source here? And I'm not sure why we need to highlight that it was a member of the Polish National council that reported it ... we should use recent secondary historians to see whether or not this is significant - instead of the original primary account (which isnt even an eyewitness, but rather a person who was in exile in England at the time...
    Well, this is now sourced to Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization for the first sentence, but the second sentence is still sourced to the original JTA report. The new source is this book which hardly seems to be a work by a Holocaust historian. This was changed with [Special:Diff/1063820669 this edit] by VM in Jan 2022. This shows the trouble with the enhanced sourcing requirements - while this is obviously an academic source - it's not in the field of Holocaust studies or by a historian of the Holocaust ... so it's not a good source for determining whether or not this particular incident/report is considered significant by Holocaust scholars and thus worth including in our article.
  21. "By December 1941, about on million Jews had been murdered by Nazi Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union.[58] The 'war of destruction' policy in the east against 'the Jewish race' became common knowledge among the Germans at all levels.[59] The total number of shooting victims in the east who were Jewish are around 1.3 to 1.5 million." - this is all mostly concerning non-Polish areas... why is it here in this article?
    Still in the article - this is another sentence that's a total mess as far as determining who put it in - it looks [Special:Diff/806524481 this 2017] edit by Poeticbent is the start of it, but it originally had much lower numbers. the numbers were changed with [Special:Diff/900473847 this edit] by now banned editor Jack90s15, although the sourcing has since been changed after that ...
  22. "The industrial killing by exhaust fumes was already tried and tested over several weeks at the Chełmno extermination camp in the then-Wartheland, under the guise of resettlement." is sourced to Masters of Death but this doesn't completely support the text - the only thing Masters says on page 233 about Chelmno is "Gas vans at Chelmno, near Lodz, had begun exterminating Polish Jews on 8 December 1941."
    This is now sourced to Montague's Chelmno and the Holocaust pp. 39-44, which is an improvement but still doesn't accurately source the given sentences. Pp. 39-49 (not just to 44, but through 49) do detail the precursor's to Chelmno, but they are discussing something other than killings by exhaust fumes. This "experiment" was the digging of large pits, placing slake lime in the bottom, putting the Jewish victims in the pit while alive, and then pouring water into the pit over the victims and onto the lime in order to create a chemical reaction between the water and lime that basically boiled the victims alive. It also details the gassing of victims in vehicles, but not with exhaust fumes, but with bottled gases. The first exhaust-fume gassings took place in early Dec 1941, and the discussion on pp. 64-65, and Montague doesn't describe it as a test, but pretty much as starting right into the extermination. And resettlement is not mentioned in connection with these early killings in Dec at Chelmno. (Thank Minerva and Juno for the Wikipedia Library which lets me get to these books without going broke buying them all)
  23. "All condemned Ghetto prisoners, without exception, were told they were going to labour camps, and asked to pack a carry-on luggage." is sourced to The Train Journey but no where on page 45 is any of this supported. And why are they "condemned Ghetto prisoners"? that's very loaded language - for a bunch of people who had never been through any judicial process at all before being herded into ghettos...
    Still in the article, still with "condemned Ghetto". This was added with this 2016 edit by Poeticbent, but the source there is Lukas 1989 p. 5, 13, 111, 201, not the current source. Lukas on pp. 5 or 13 does not discuss deportations. p. 111 does say that the Jewish deportees were told they were going to labor camps, but it's from a memoir of a Polish citizen who lived through WWII in Poland - so not a historian's account of the process, but the impressions of someone who was involved and not even someone involved in the deportations, but just an ordinary citizen. P. 201 is the index .. so I'm not sure why that is included in the original citation.
  24. "Meanwhile, the idea of mass murder by means of stationary gas chambers was discussed in Lublin already since September 1941. It was a precondition for the newly drafted Operation Reinhard led by Odilo Globocnik who ordered the construction of death camps at Belzec, Sobibór, and Treblinka." (note that 'in Lublin' is linked to Nisko Plan which doesn't really make sense - I'm pretty sure the discussions didn't take place in Lublin - they probably took place somewhere in Germany ... this sentence is pretty mangled) is sourced to "https://books.google.com/books?id=va3CMvKMGj0C&q=technical+prerequisite#v=snippet&q=technical%20prerequisite&f=false this source] which is a bit ... different. It states that the idea of stationary gas chambers must have developed BY September 1941 at the latest, nor does this source support the statement that the development of the gas chambers was a precondition of Operation Reinhard. Nor does it support the statement that Globocnik ordered the construction of the death camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka (although this is something that could be sourced ...).
    Still in the article, still mangled, still sourced to the same source. It was added in [Special:Diff/791533438 this 2017] edit by Poeticbent sourced to the same source.
  25. The same source as above is used to source "At Majdanek and Auschwitz, the work of the stationary gas chambers began in March and May respectively, preceded by experiments with Zyklon B." but the only thing this source supports is that the work on the Birkenau gas chambers began in May... there is nothing here about Zyklon B nor about Majdanek.
    Still in the article, still the same source, also added in [Special:Diff/791174510 this 2017 edit] by Poeticbent.
  26. "Between 1942 and 1944, the most extreme measure of the Holocaust, the extermination of millions of Jews from Poland and all over Europe was carried out in six extermination camps. There were no Polish guards at any of the Reinhard camps, despite the sometimes used misnomer Polish death camps. All killing centres were designed and operated by the Nazis in strict secrecy, aided by the Ukrainian Trawnikis." is sourced to Rethinking Poles and Jews which is a problem, because the one bit that might support it - "there were no Polish guards at the camps" is pulled out (you can tell because the google books snippet is from a search for the phrase "There were no Polish guards at any of the camps") but the context is missing. The phrase is in a paragraph that is discussing how Polish accounts of the Holocaust differ from non-Polish accounts. So the phrase "there were no Polish guards in the camps" is what the partisan Polish accounts state, not a fact that can be stated in wikipedia. And the rest of the information given in these sentences cannot be supported at all by the source given. I'll also point out that this US Holocaust Museum article on Belzec specifically mentions that some of the guards at Belzec were "However, the bulk of the guard unit, between 90 and 120 men, were either former Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) of various nationalities or Ukrainian and Polish civilians selected or recruited for this purpose." which would seem to contradict the statement our article makes that there were no Polish guards in any of the Reinhard camps (for those not aware, Belzec/Sobibor/Treblinka are collectively known as the Reinhard camps - for Operation Reinhard which operated those three death camps).
    This is still in the article and still sourced to Rethinking Poles and Jews. It was added in [Special:Diff/791174510 this 2017] edit by Poeticbent. I'll note that it's actually the "Introduction" to Rethinking Poles and Jews which was written by Cherry and Orla-Bukowska.
  27. "and the remaining subcamps of KL Lublin/Majdanek camp complex including Poniatowa, Budzyń, Kraśnik, Puławy, Lipowa, and also during massacres in Łomazy, Międzyrzec, Łuków, Radzyń, Parczew, Końskowola, Komarówka and all other locations, augmented by members of the SS, SD, Kripo, as well as the reserve police battalions from Orpo (each, responsible for annihilation of thousands of Jews)" is sourced to [https://books.google.com/books?id=bNzq9wHv4jUC&q=SS+SD+Kripo+Orpo+Amt+IV#v=onepage&q=three%20million&f=false The Gestapo but nothing on the pages given supports the information given in our article (the link does not have page numbers so I had to search for the quote that's given in the footnote, but nothing on that page nor the previous page or later page gives support to the information in our article).
    Still in the article, still sourced to the same source. I'll note that this is the 2011 edition but the book was first published in 1957 (see https://archive.org/details/gestapoinstrumen0000edwa) so we're not talking about the best source possible, besides the issues of not supporting the information. The information was added in [Special:Diff/559983225 this 2013] edit by Poeticbent, where the sources were instead Browning's Ordinary Men and this archived page from deathcamps.org. The deathcamps.org page covers a specific event in the Holocaust - the Operation Harvest Festival so it's not exactly a good idea to extrapolate from it to more general events. The Ordinary Men citations support a couple of the locations for massacres, but not all of them nor does it support the SS/SD/Kripo/etc information. In short, this fails verification.
  28. "The Chełmno extermination camp (German: Kulmhof) was built as the first-ever, following Hitler's launch of Operation Barbarossa. It was a pilot project for the development of other extermination sites. The experiments with exhaust gases were finalized by murdering 1,500 Poles at Soldau." is sourced to this source which only mentions Chelmno once in a listing of all the death camps - nothing from our article is supported by this source. Other soures are given - this one doesn't fully support the information either - on page 26 it merely supports that Chelmno was the first extermination camp but none of the rest of the sentences. The other source given is a post on a WarRelics bulletin board system from a user known as "Carl" that also merely supports that Chelmno was the first extermination camp - I have no words that this sort of source is considered reliable by editors of this article. I'll note that the [https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/chelmno US Holocaust Museum article on Chelmno does not mention any non-Jewish first victims ... in fact it states that "During the first five weeks, the victims were Jewish residents of nearby areas in Wartheland District."
    This is now sourced to p. 6 of Montague's Chelmno, which mostly supports the information, but it doesn't totally. The German name is actually given on p. 5, but that's a minor quibble. There is no mention of "following Hitler's launch of Operation Barbarossa." The "The experiments with exhaust gases were finalized by murdering 1,500 Poles at Soldau." bit is now gone. However, when this was fixed, the "It was a pilot project for the development of other extermination sites. The killing method at Chełmno grew out of the 'euthanasia' program in which busloads of unsuspecting hospital patients were gassed in air-tight shower rooms at Bernburg, Hadamar and Sonnenstein." sentences were now given a source of Browning The Origins of the Final Solution p. 191 which supports the "euthanasia program in which busloads of unsuspecting hospital patients were gassed in air-tight shower rooms at Bernburg, Hadamar and Sonnenstein." (although they were actually not just hospital paitents - this wording implies something that isn't quite correct) but nothing on p. 191 or the surrounding pages connects this with Chelmno extermination camp nor does it call Chelmno a pilot program for other extermination camps. This can be fixed by putting the Montague citation to p. 6 onto the pilot program part and up to "grew out of the euthanasia program" and leaving the Browning citation for the names of the euthanasia centers - although as an editorial decision, it might be best to remove the names of the centers and just link to Aktion T4. Montague would support "It was a pilot project for the development of other extermination sites. The killing method at Chełmno grew out of the 'euthanasia' program in which mentally and physically disabled persons were gassed."
  29. "Additionally, 20,000 foreign Jews and 5,000 Roma were brought in from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia." is sourced to a a post on JewishGen by Shirley Rotbein Flaum. This is not a good quality source at all.
    This was reworded in [Special:Diff/1064376467 this edit in Jan 2022] by VM to "Among those were also approximately 11,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, Czechia and Luxembourg murdered in April 1941[95] and close to 5,000 Roma from Austria, murdered in January 1942.[96]" with the 95 footnote to Montague p. 68 and the 96 footnote to Montague p. 65, both of which support the information. (A minor editorial matter - I'd probably combine both footnotes into a "Montague pp. 64-69" source instead of the two different ones, but that's an editorial choice)
  30. "All victims were murdered with the use of mobile gas vans (Sonderwagen), which had exhaust pipes reconfigured and poisons added to gasoline" ... this is the first I've ever read of poison being added to the gasoline used at Chelmno - I would think we'd have some ironclad sourcing for this - but the sourcing is to the original JTA news report of the trials in 1963 and a German source that I'm unable to read. I'll note that the US Holocaust Museum article on Chelmno gives a pretty detailed description of the usual execution procedure at Chelmno.
    This is now fixed with [Special:Diff/1063400669 this Jan 2022] edit by VM to read "Almost all victims were murdered with the use of mobile gas vans (Sonderwagen), which had reconfigured exhaust pipes. In the last phase of the camp's existence, the exhumed bodies were cremated in open-air for several weeks during Sonderaktion 1005. The ashes, mixed with crushed bones, were trucked every night to the nearby river in sacks made from blankets, to remove the evidence of mass murder." but it still retains the original sources. The JTA source is a newspaper account of trial testimony - not a good source. The other source is this source which is definitely NOT a good source - the subtitle on the main page is "Against organized Germanism" and the first bit is "The relativization of German crimes and anti-Russian war incitement in Germany:" - this needs to have better sourcing.
  31. "with a maximum capacity of 22,000 executions in twenty-four hours" is sourced to A History of Europe, which I can only see in snippet view - but that says "The maximum capacity of the camp was probably the 22000 executions in twenty- four hours" ... that probably is kinda important.
    This is still in the article. It was added [Special:Diff/421488373 in this 2011] edit by the sockpuppet-blocked User:Those Who Helped, a sockpuppet of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Loosmark/Archive. It's sourced to a 1973 general history of Europe in the 20th century. LEaving aside that this is an outdated source by a non-Holocaust historian, on p. 250 it says that "max capacity" figure... but it's for AUSCHWITZ, not Treblinka. ARGH! It's been in the Treblinka article for ... 12 years.
  32. "The dead were initially buried in large mass graves, but the stench from the decomposing bodies could be smelled up to ten kilometers away. As a result, the Nazis began burning the bodies on open-air grids made of concrete pillars and railway tracks." has two sources. The first sentence is sourced to History vs Apologetics but the source basically says the smell was a sign of the other serious environmental effects that were occurring (at Auschwitz they had issues with the drinking water getting polluted, for example) as well as the burial pits being evidence of the crimes being committed at the camp. I can't access the second source - but I'll note that there is no page number for this source (which I actually own ... I just can't access it right this moment - but it's a BIG book - so it needs a page range so it can be verified).
    This is still in the article. It was added [Special:Diff/283846468 in 2009 with this edit] by Poeticbent, where the only source was Klee et al The Good Old Days. This is a bit of a problematic source, as it's a selection of first-person accounts by the perpetrators of the Holocaust about their experiences. This should not be used for information - there are plenty of secondary sources available.
  33. "The lack of verified survivors however, makes this camp much less known." is sourced to the the US Holocaust Museum article on Belzec, but I've read the entire article twice and still don't see where this fact is verified by the article.
    Still in the article, still with the same source. This was added in [Special:Diff/284100476 this 2009] edit by Poeticbent. (As an aside... why did the original edit say "The lack of varied survivors however, makes this camp much lesser known."? I can't figure out why "varied" is included)
  34. "New arrivals were forced to split into groups, hand over their valuables, and disrobe inside a walled-off courtyard for a bath. Women had their hair cut off by the Sonderkommando barbers. Once undressed, the Jews were led down a narrow path to the gas chambers which were disguised as showers. The victims were murdered with carbon monoxide gas from the exhaust pipes of a gasoline engine removed from a Red Army tank." is sourced to this website which reprints testimony from the guards of the camp - this is a primary source and again, we shouldn't be using this for details of the camp operation - historians are trained to interpret primary sources ... they are the ones who should be determining how to weigh the bias of the testimony and the weight to give to the perpetrator's accounts vs. the victims accounts. At the very least, the wiki article should make clear that this is based not on secondary historians but the testimony of the guards/etc.
    Still in the article. It was added in [Special:Diff/656785723 this 2015] edit by Poeticbent.
  35. "10% of the Polish Army which fought alone against the Nazi-Soviet Invasion of Poland were Jewish Poles, some 100,000 troops" is sourced to this news article, which states something slightly different - "According to Polish documents, the percentage of Jews serving in the Polish army in WWII—both when the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and in the ranks of the Free Polish Army organized in the Soviet Union and in England—came to 10 percent of the total forces." the article is a bit unclear, but I think it's saying that 100,000 of the polish forces throughout WWII were Jewish - while I believe our article is trying to say that 100,000 Jewish troops were in the 1939 Polish army that fought against a Nazi-Soviet invasion. So... the source doesn't support the "fought alone against the Nazi-Soviet invasion" part ... leaving aside the issue of the implication that there was a "Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland" - when in fact it was very much more complicated than that...
    This is still in the article. It was added in [Special:Diff/900450419 this 2019] edit by ChumChum7.
  36. "even though the elders were terrified by the prospect of mass retaliation against the women and children in the case of anti-Nazi revolt" is sourced to Trunk's Judenrat which I do not have with me, but this is a major simplification of the situation in a wide variety of ghettos - it's a gross oversimplification of the situation and has a bit of POV that's not exactly fair to the enormous scholarship on the issue of Jewish responses to the ghettos and possibilities of revolt.
    This is still in the article. It was added in [Special:Diff/792126714 this 2017 edit] by Poeticbent. IT's sourced to Judenrat pp. 464-466, 472-474, and Gilbert's Holocaust p. 828. Gilbert does not support this information - in fact, this is the very last page of the work, and it doesn't mention the Judenrats at all. Nor does the pages given for Trunk support this information - pages 456-457 ... sorta do, but again, we're losing nuance and more recent scholarship - Trunk's book was first published in 1972, and there has been a LOT of research since then in the last 50 years.
  37. "As the German authorities undertook to liquidate the ghettos, armed resistance was offered in over 100 locations on either side of Polish-Soviet border of 1939, overwhelmingly in eastern Poland." is sourced to this archive of a US Holocaust Museum article. However, the USHM article states "Jewish civilians offered armed resistance in over 100 ghettos in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union." which is not the same thing. Nor is "overwhelmingly in eastern Poland" supported by this source.
    This is still in our article. It was added in [Special:Diff/792126714 this 2017] edit by Poeticbent, sourced to the currently given sources - as this source is also given, but doesn't support this information (I'm not seeing the 100 locations or the "as the German authorities undertook to liquidate the ghettos" nor the "overwhelmingly in eastern Poland" part)
  38. "The Polish Government in Exile, headquartered in London, also provided special assistance – funds, arms, and other supplies – to Jewish resistance organizations such as the Jewish Combat Organization and the Jewish Military Union." this is sourced to Contested Memories, specifically the article by Dariusz Stola entitled "The. Polish Government-in-Exile and the Final Solution" which article is much more than just a discussion of some funds/arms/etc provided to the Jewish resistance movements. On page 86 Stola says "But the government in exile paid less attention to Jewish matters than one might have supposed, particularly from today's perspective." and then on page 90 "Jewish leaders abroad were prodding the government in exile to broadcast by radio an appeal to the Polish population to aid Polish Jewry. But for several months the government resisted, offering various explanations. Eventually, General Sikorski made such an appeal during his speech broadcasted to Poland on 4 May 1943...." which came after news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began...(it began 19 April 1943 and was mostly over by 29 April, although the command bunker wasn't found by the Germans until 8 May) Stola also notes that Zegota didn't start giving aid to Jews until 1942. I'll note that Stola goes to some length into WHY so much of the aid/efforts were late or didn't accomplish much - and that not all of the reasons were antisemitism, but I would expect that more of Stola's nuance would come through in this section, instead the article is just used to source the fact that some aid went to Jewish resistance groups (while other sources dispute how much actual aid actually went to the fighters or ghetto inhabitants...but that's probably a bit beyond the scope of this particular article - like many things Polish-Jewish-in-WWII, its very ... complicated and full of grey areas).
    Still there, still gives the impression that the aid was "special" with the implication that it was especially important and noteworthy and perhaps even large. It was added [Special:Diff/284696682 with this 2009 edit] by Poeticbent.
  39. "The phenomenon of Polish collaboration was described by John Connelly and Leszek Gondek as marginal, when seen against the backdrop of European and world history. Estimates of the number of individual Polish collaborators vary from as few as 7,000 to as many as several hundred thousand." Here is a problem of weight. One side of the debate on Polish collaboration is given more weight than the other side. While the "minimal collaboration" side is given a sentence and a quote, the "large collaboration side" is only mentioned as a high figure of collaborators.
    Still there, still with the weight issues.
  40. "The Polish Underground State strongly opposed this sort of collaboration, and threatened Szmalcowniki with death; sentences were usually given and carried out by the Special Courts." again - this appears to be a weight issue - I don't read Polish so I can't judge how accurately the source is reflected in the article, but I can see some issues here - while the implication is that the Underground went after blackmailers and sentenced them to death - we're not actually given any statistics - how many cases actually resulted in conviction and death? How many cases were actually brought forward and how many were ignored or not prosecuted?
  41. "Jewish property, taken over by Poles, was a factor behind the beating and murdering of Jews by Poles between summer 1944 and 1946, including the Kielce pogrom." ... and is still a contentious issue in Polish-Israeli relations to this day.
    Still there, still contentious. This statement, while true, leaves out other possible issues for the murders of Jewish survivors between 1944 and 1946. The later discussion of the Kielce progrom goes into great detail about the statements made against the progrom, but doesn't discuss WHY it happened.
    Other, new issues I'm noticing:
  42. "At Birkenau, the four killing installations (each consisting of coatrooms, multiple gas chambers and industrial-scale crematoria) were built in the following year." has the source given as "Institut Fuer Zeitgeschicthe (Institute for Contemporary History) (1992). "Gassing Victims in the Holocaust: Background & Overview". Extermination camps in occupied Poland. Munich, Germany: Jewish Virtual Library. Archived from the original on May 29, 2015." but the author is NOT "Institut Fuer Zeitgeschicthe", as that is just given as a source at the bottom of the page. The source is actually on the Jewish Virtual Library which has been put into the "unreliable" category by WP:RSP. It was added with the given source in [Special:Diff/792126714 this 2017] edit by Poeticbent.
  43. "Passports and money were collected for "safekeeping" at a cashier's booth set up by the "Road to Heaven", a fenced-off path leading into the gas chambers disguised as communal showers. Directly behind were the burial pits, dug with a crawler excavator." is sourced to a History Press (not academic at all) biography of a Treblinka survivor. We have better sources. The author is a journalist, not a historian. Added in [Special:Diff/655695238 this 2015 edit] by Poeticbent.
  44. "The bodies of the dead, buried in mass graves, swelled in the heat as a result of putrefaction making the earth split, which was resolved with the introduction of crematoria pits in October 1942." is sourced to Rudolf Reder's memoir of Belzec - a primary source. Added in [Special:Diff/284100476 this 2009 edit] by Poeticbent
  45. "The gassing of Polish Jews was performed in plain view of other inmates, without as much as a fence around the killing facilities." sourced to this page on Jewish Virtual Library
  46. "the camp had only 71 Jews left." - sourced to Nuremburg trial transcripts - a primary source
  47. "The exact number of Holocaust survivors is unknown. Up to 300,000 Jewish Poles were among the 1.5 million Polish citizens deported from eastern Poland by the Soviets after the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland of 1939, putting Jews deep in the USSR and thereby out of the range of the Nazi invasion of eastern Poland in 1941." is sourced to this page on the International Business Times which is listed on WP:RSP and generally unreliable
  48. "After the war, the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg Trials and Poland's Supreme National Tribunal concluded that the aim of German policies in Poland – the extermination of Jews, Poles, Roma, and others – had "all the characteristics of genocide in the biological meaning of this term." is sourced to the Nuremburg Trial transcripts - which are (1) primary sources and (2) which is the total coverage of the "postwar trials" section of the article - which seems to me a bit ... undue/underwhelming considering the subject.

I haven't even started actually comparing the rest of the article to the sources to make sure that anything I haven't flagged up above is correctly sourced.