Talk:Rudolf Vrba/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Zundel trial

The article mentions this briefly in passing, but what it not be a good idea to state what Vrba actually said at that trial?

I don't know of any reliable secondary sources that discuss his testimony at the trial, and in any event it would be undue weight on a minor episode in his life. Jayjg (talk) 22:27, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

It's hardly a minor episode considering what he revealed.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.245.172.13 (talk • contribs)

Do reliable sources discuss it or even take note of it? Jayjg (talk) 11:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

What would you consider a reliable source? If a book or website stated something you find disturbing, would that automatically make it unreliable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.245.172.13 (talk • contribs)

Please click on the link in my previous post above to understand what Wikipedia considers to be a reliable source. Jayjg (talk) 21:45, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Would a trial transcript suffice as a reliable source, if a newspaper article( "Book 'An Artistic Picture'", Dick Chapman, Toronto Sun, January 24, 1985) is deemed inadequate? 159.105.80.103 (talk) 11:17, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia wants reliable secondary sources. Please review WP:SECONDARY. Jayjg (talk) 19:24, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Location of "Canada"

Canada as it was known is actually in the Birkenau camp and not in Auschwitz I so he was not transferred 4km to the extermination camp from Auschwitz I as he was ALREADY in Birkenau within the area od that camp designated for the sorting/looting of goods from the murdered.) Canada was a camp within a camp and had moderately better conditions. It would be reasonable to say he was transferred to the main prisoner area of the Birkenau Camp.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.210.115.70 (talk • contribs)

Interesting. Anyone have any sources on this? Jayjg (talk) 18:59, 27 September 2010 (UTC)


Vandalism in "Auschwitz I" section?

"Playboy Magazine", "super happy funtime" and "100,000,000 Million Jews" all seem out of place. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.142.184.243 (talk) 01:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

FA tools

Toolbox

Just noting here that the referencing could use some tidying over the next few weeks. There are refs inside sentences, and multiple refs after sentences, so it's hard to see which source supports which point. I'd like to start bundling them, though I'm not sure how that will work with the short refs and templates, but I'll give it a try. Also some dead links and overlinking, which I'll work on too. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Dead/redirected links and dabs fixed. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 12:53, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
All the double refs are gone, and there actually weren't as many as I thought, and I've tidied some of the writing a little, so that's the main updating finished. I'm going to start checking the refs to make sure they're in the right place with the right page numbers, but that's a slower job that I'll be doing over the next couple of weeks or so. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Grammar

Hi Jayjg and SlimVirgin,

I notice that you two and I disagree on a bit of grammar in this article, so why don't we talk about it here? I won't change anything if you would prefer to leave it as is, but I do want to respectfully disagree with your views that my changes introduced errors. Below is a summary of the changes I proposed accompanied by a technical explanation for them.

  • Original sentence: "Vrba believed more lives could have been saved had the officials published it immediately; he argued that, had Hungary's Jews known they were going to the gas chambers, they might have fought or run rather than board the trains."
  • Reason for change: The three verbs in " ... they might have fought or run rather than board the trains ... " (fought, run, board) must all take the participle form because they are all used in conjunction with the auxiliary verb have. Board is not a past participle; rather, it is the present form of the verb, and this is not correct to use with an auxiliary verb.
  • Since you did not like the original change, perhaps you might like to change the sentence like this: "Vrba believed more lives could have been saved had the officials published it immediately; he argued that, had Hungary's Jews known they were going to the gas chambers, they might have fought or run instead of boarding the trains."
  • Original phrase: "the Slovakian version of the Nazi's Nuremberg Laws"
  • Amended phrase: "the Slovakian version of the Nazis' Nuremberg Laws"
  • Reason: Nazi is singular. Nazis is plural. The Nuremberg Laws were not the laws of a single Nazi; they were laws of the Nazis. The correct way to form the possessive of a plural noun ending in s is to simply add an apostrophe to the end of the word. The word Nazi's is the possessive form of the singular noun, which is not correct in this situation. Therefore, the plural possessive form, Nazis', is to be used. Below I quote two other instances in this article where the plural possessive is correctly used. Do you see the correlation in structure between these sentences and the one in question? If you agree that plural possessive is correct here, why would it not be in the third situation?
"Bauer writes that, by the time the Vrba-Wetzler report was prepared, it was already too late for anything to alter the Nazis' deportation plans."
"Kárný argues that, long after the war was over, Vbra wanted to testify about the deportations out of a sense of longing, to force the world to face the magnitude of the Nazis' crimes."
  • Original sentence: "There were also restrictions on where Jews could live, how far they could travel without permission, and they were required to wear a Yellow badge."
  • Amended sentence: "There were also restrictions on where Jews could live and on how far they could travel without permission, and they were required to wear a Yellow badge."
  • Reason: This is called parallelism. If you would like me to share reliable sources that explain this grammatical rule with you, please let me know. I will be happy to share them. For now, I will briefly summarize this rule for purposes of discussion here. Basically, whenever we have a sequence of items in a list separated by commas, all of the clauses in the sequence must have headwords that are of the same part of speech. That is, they must all be adjectives, nouns, verbs, prepositions, etc. in order for all of the items in the list to be equal to one another. The first two clauses in the sequence above are dependent clauses and have the headwords where and how. Thus, they are adverbial clauses. The final item in the sequence is not even a dependent clause; it is an independent clause because it is capable of standing on its own as a sentence. What's more, its headword is they, making it a noun phrase. We cannot list these three items together without violating the rules of parallelism. Therefore, we need to remove the list format and connect the first two clauses with a conjunction. Why didn't you like the solution I proposed? Another suggestion for rectifying this problem could be: "There were also restrictions on where Jews could live and on how far they could travel without permission. Additionally, they were required to wear a Yellow badge."

I hope I have been clear in stating my concerns with the grammatical integrity of these phrases. Would one or both of you like to explain why we don't see eye-to-eye? As I've stated, I'll respect your preferences if you want to leave these sentences as they are. However, doing so leaves errors in the body of an otherwise exceptionally good article, and I think that something we all do have in common is the desire for this outstanding article to be as flawless as possible. I look forward to discussing this with you! Armadillopteryx (talk) 23:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Armadillo, "Nazi's" has been corrected, as has the restrictions sentence. Will take a look at the other shortly. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 23:25, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Okay, thank you for looking into it. Armadillopteryx (talk) 23:36, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
"... they might have fought or run rather than board the trains." This is fine with the bare infinitive. "I would have run rather than kiss him" i.e. I would have preferred to run rather than to kiss, and they would have preferred to fight rather than to board. I've been trying to look up the name of the rule, because I don't know it, but all I could find was this (search for Mother Jones). SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 23:41, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
You're right. I'll concede that this was my bad call. Sorry to bother you with it. By the way, "Nazi's" has not been changed yet. Do you still want to change it, or may I? Armadillopteryx (talk)
I'm sorry, I thought I had changed it. Yes, by all means do. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 00:06, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
It's all right. I've done it. By the way, I really appreciate your help. I'm just getting started on Wikipedia, so I'm still feeling my way around. Armadillopteryx (talk) 00:16, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for your help too. People who care about good writing are always very welcome on Wikipedia. :) SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 00:40, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Commas after dates

I've noticed that no comma follows the year in several dates in this article. The literature I've always read classifies the year in long-form MDY dates as an interruption in the sentence that is enclosed in commas. The only exception to this occurs when the year is the last item in the sentence, in which case the second comma is (obviously) replaced by a period. So, for example, I agree with the punctuation in these sentences:

  • "Mass transports began on May 15, 1944, at a rate of 12,000 people a day ... "
  • "The Protocols included an earlier two-part report from August 10 and August 12, 1943, by Witold Pilecki ... "

But I disagree with the absence of the comma after the year in these sentences:

  • "Details from the Vrba-Wetzler report alerting the world to what was happening inside the camp were broadcast in Czech and Slovak on June 15, 1944 by the BBC World Service ... "
  • "He wrote that this was confirmed on January 15, 1944 by one of the builders ... "
  • "According to Kárný, the report was written and translated by April 28, 1944 at the latest."
  • "The text of the Vrba-Wetzler report, under the title "German Extermination Camps—Auschwitz and Birkenau", was first published in full in English on November 26, 1944 by the Executive Office of the U.S. War Refugee Board."
  • "He died of cancer on March 27, 2006 in Vancouver."

I'd like to insert commas after the years in the sentences in the second group. Any objections? Armadillopteryxtalk 02:28, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I think there have always been debates about when and where commas are appropriate. Some prefer more, some fewer. Jayjg (talk) 15:33, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Okay. How do you think we should proceed, then? For the sake of consistency, we ought to punctuate all of the above sentences the same way. That is, we should either remove the comma in the first two instances or add it in the others. My preference, as I mentioned above, is to add the comma as prescribed by books that classify the year as an interruption. If there's a strong preference to go the other way, though, I'd be okay with that. Armadillopteryxtalk 18:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
I personally prefer fewer commas, and in context the sentences read better that way. The commas are where they are for readability, rather than following a rigid rule about whether or not there is a long form date. Jayjg (talk) 19:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Assuming readability is the main concern, I don't see how that would be compromised by removing the commas in the first group of sentences. Do you? Armadillopteryxtalk 19:47, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
I have no objection if you wish to remove the first two commas. Jayjg (talk) 21:07, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I'll do that then. Thanks! Armadillopteryxtalk 03:05, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Circumstances of Name Change

I find it interesting that nothing is mentioned in the article regarding his name change, other than he was born Walter Rosenberg. When did he or his parents change his name? What, if any, significance did the "new" name have? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.249.130.108 (talk) 08:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

If you read the Rudolf Vrba#Resistance activities section, it says he "joined the Czechoslovak partisan units in September 1944, taking Rudolf Vrba as his nom de guerre." Jayjg (talk) 15:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Mantello

The recent addition of this material [1] is a copyright violation, much of it copied from here. So I'm going to revert it for now, but I'll rewrite it at some point and insert it elsewhere in the article. SlimVirgin (talk) 00:21, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Didn’t realize that the USHMM is copyright. However this article without the Mantello part can not be considered accurate. Will add the Mantello content in my own language very soon to take care of the copyright issue. SV If you have any other issues with the post you are welcome to post in here on talk page.
Original poster — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.83.199.143 (talk) 00:07, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
I don't mind if you add something, though it should be a bit shorter (not a whole sub-section), and we should be careful to place it in context. We would also need more detail about timing, and it would be good to find a second academic source. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
Interesting primary source: New York Times article out of Switzerland here, clearly based on the Vrba-Wetzler report, dated the day before the order to end the transports. SlimVirgin (talk) 05:23, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Zündel Trial AGAIN: The Toronto Sun,and The Montreal Gazette

A quote of the Zündel trial currently exists in the article. The citation is the Montreal Gazette. But information from the Toronto Sun has been deleted with the reason given as "misrepresented". Can Squiddly explain please.--Mystichumwipe (talk) 07:33, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Not accepted

What is meant by the following sentences in the introduction? "Vrba argued until the end of his life that the deportees would have refused to board the trains had they known they were not being resettled. His position is generally not accepted by Holocaust historians."? Is this implying that Holocaust historians would say they would have boarded the trains even if they knew they were going to be killed? How logically unbelievable. Can anyone provide the source of this offhand comment? Kypwri (talk) 13:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Kypwri, historians says that people would not have believed it, or might have believed but still would not have acted. The source is in the note after the sentence. There's also this paragraph in the article.
If you're interested in this, I recommend George Klein (2011). "Confronting the Holocaust: An Eyewitness Account", in Randolph L. Braham and William vanden Heuvel (ed.). The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary, Columbia University Press.
Klein was given a copy of the Vrba report as a teenager in Budapest and tried to warn his family about the massacres, to no avail. One uncle almost hit him, asking how he could believe such nonsense. There's also Klein's "The Ultimate Fear of the Traveler Returning from Hell" in his book Pietà, where he discusses it with Vrba. SarahSV (talk) 17:13, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

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Kapo

@Poeticbent: you removed the paragraph about Yup the kapo with the edit summary: "the paragraph was based on CRYSTALLBALLING and hearsay, serving as his memoir's literary device meant to evoke a particular impact on the reader's mind, there's no factual encyclopedic value in it". Can you say what you mean by that? SarahSV (talk) 04:10, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

  • The same information was repeated almost word-for-word in section "Dispute about Hungarian Jews", first paragraph. Either intended or unintended tautology. There was too much emphasis in this article already on the literary devices often utilized in personal memoirs to paint a grandiose picture of the events. I noticed though, that you changed that paragraph significantly already. Thanks, Poeticbent talk
It reads read like a novel, so I removed that, but I'm not going to argue about that: "When Jews from the Netherlands arrived, he wrote, they brought cheese, French Jews brought sardines, and Greek Jews brought halva and olives. Now it was Hungarian salami.[28] He had to escape not only for himself, he wrote, but also to raise the alarm.[29]" Poeticbent talk 04:33, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
That's part summarizes his own story; the paragraph begins "According to Vrba's memoir". That particular point (Hungarian salami and the kapo) is important because it was later disputed that he had heard anything about Hungarian Jews. SarahSV (talk) 04:43, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
I didn't read his memoir, but the Wikipedia article reads like a really bad novel. I could go on, till the cows come home: Bulgarian marinated tomatoes, Polish bonbons, salmon from Odessa, Ukrainian piroshki, Champagne from Côte des Blancs, Sicilian pizza, Slovakian gnocchi ... etc. Poeticbent talk 05:07, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
Okay, fair point. I'll take a look at the writing and try to tone that down a bit. SarahSV (talk) 05:20, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Featured criteria

I believe that substantial improvements are necessary in order for the article to meet featured criteria. Here are some of the issues that I noticed.

References

  • In general, the bulk of the references are to primary sources such as Vrba and Klein or news coverage, only a minority of footnotes reference scholarly sources even when those would be more appropriate. This also raises concerns about due weight.
  • Views about historical consensus attribute to Klein, who is not a historian, also without a page number, in the lede
  • No citation : "The committee had organized safe passage for Jews into Hungary before the German invasion, and thereafter sought to help them escape the deportations."
  • Many Some other citations are missing page numbers: Fleming 2014 (which is also in a different format than the others), Conway (1997)
  • Some citations have too long page ranges. Most citations should only refer to one or two pages for maximum verifiability.

Neutrality

  • At times, Vrba's alternative facts are not sufficiently challenged. His figure of 1,750,000 murdered should be compared to the number of people historians believe were killed before his escape, around 600,000-700,000.
  • The sections on Vrba's allegations and "survivor-expert discourse" should be reorganized to directly contrast his claims with historical evidence and the refutations of mainstream historians, in order to avoid false equivalence.
  • That said, the quote from Amir seems unnecessarily polemical, especially since he doesn't seem to be a widely regarded historian, and is probably given undue weight.
  • Ruth Linn is a psychologist, not a historian, and she helped get Vrba awarded an honorary degree, which raises questions about her objectivity. Escaping Auschwitz is given more weight than scholars seem to give it; it has only 20 citations on Google Scholar. For example, in the Survivor-Expert section, it contains a paragraph cited to Linn about how Vrba was allegedly minimized in postwar Israel, but not Bauer or other historians' rationale for why distributing the Vrba-Wetzler report would not have been effective (I think Tuvia Friling may have also covered this subject in Arrows in the Dark, which also discusses Nazi-Jewish negotiations)
  • The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary is not a scholarly source. It has been cited only 3 times on Google Scholar and a review of it says, "In an edited collection of patchy quality and diverse styles ranging from the philosophical (Robert Jan Van Pelt) through the encyclopedic (Zoltán Tibori Szabó) and polemical (Ruth Linn) to the autobiographical (George Klein), the long-debated question of what Hungarian Jews and the wider world …" [2] (emphasis added) I think that we should avoid such a source in a FA.
  • Personal correspondence of Bauer is cited to the exclusion of his published statements: "We can rely on Vrba when he reports what he saw and went through himself. But his interpretations have to be the subject of an analysis, just like every document and every testimony." (Bauer 2002, p. 235-236) is probably more appropriate to cite than "not a memoir in the traditional sense" comment.
  • The statement that "Kastner's reasons for not making the document public are unknown" is, in my opinion, somewhat misleading, because censorship restrictions limited his ability to make the report public. According to Braham, Kastner did not do everything in his power to disseminate the report. But Braham has more questions about Kastner's reasons for not publicizing what he knew about the Final Solution before the occupation, as early as 1942. (Braham 2000, p. 93-95) Also, Kastner aided and abetted the youth movements, who did bring copies of the report to the transit ghettos, but the local Jewish leadership banned them. (Bauer 2002, p. 236, also discussed in Asher Cohen, The Halutz Resistance in Hungary 1942- 1944; Munkácsi, Hogyan történt, p. 82; Leni Yahil, The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 642-643). Although I'm wary of adding too much detail to this section, which belongs in the Vrba-Wetzler report article and Kastner's article, I think this section could be rewritten to be more neutral.

Coverage

  • The article does not discuss Vrba's allegations about the deportations from Slovakia, which are probably more farfetched than the ones that he made about Kastner. These allegations are discussed in Bauer 1994, pp. 70-74, and Bauer 2002, pp. 234-237 who, by the way, has a more nuanced perspective on resistance to deportation than is represented in this article.
  • The article sometimes goes into unnecessary detail. Does it really enhance the reader's understanding to know the numbers of Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz, or that they were arrested for a currency violation while getting drunk after learning about Normandy? Or that the translator was "Neumann's aide, Oscar Krasniansky, an engineer and stenographer who later took the name Oskar Isaiah Karmiel?" This is especially concerning given that most of such details are cited to Vrba, and Vrba's testimony is known to be unreliable.
  • Missing important details. Vrba communicated with Fredy Hirsch, a leader of the Theresienstadt family camp, repeatedly warning him (correctly) that parts of the family camp was going to be liquidated on 8 March 1944 and the remainder in June. Thousands of the inhabitants of the family camp were gassed on 8 March; saving the remainder was said to be one of the motivators for Vrba's escape.[3]. The inclusion of the family camp in the Vrba-Wetzler report[4] sparked diplomatic protests from the Czech embassy.[5](also Gilbert 1981 p. 233) The incident is also mentioned in his autobiography. The family camp is discussed in an essay in this German-language book: [6]
  • While at Auschwitz, Vrba and Wetzler were approached by SS guard Viktor Pestek [cs; de] who offered to help them escape, but they refused, fearing that it was a trick.[7]

Factual errors

  • Dr. Oskar Neumann was not the chairman of the Jewish Council. He was an operative of the Working Group and in charge of the Bratislava Jewish Council's retraining department (Bauer 1994, p. 70) (edit: according to Bauer 2002, p. 182, he became the leader of the Jewish Council in 1943. However, in interviewing Vrba he was acting in his capacity as a representative of the Working Group, since this was strictly an illegal activity). (a possible indication of this article's over-reliance on Vrba's account)

I hope that these issues can be addressed so that the article can keep its featured status. Catrìona (talk) 17:55, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin, GizzyCatBella, Rms125a@hotmail.com, and DHeyward: You've been active in editing this article recently, any thoughts? Catrìona (talk) 15:53, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
The article tries to steer a course through the pro- and anti-Vrba positions. Re: sources, you say there are a lack of scholarly sources, but you're choosing to define at least two as non-scholarly: Linn (Cornell University Press) and Braham and vanden Heuvel (Columbia University Press). See Works cited for others. Which scholarly sources are missing?
Klein has no page number in the lead because the point is supported by the whole article. Which other refs are missing page numbers? SarahSV (talk) 16:11, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
@SlimVirgin: My concern is exactly that: "steering a course through the pro- and anti-Vrba positions" has led to false equivalence between Vrba's alternative facts and the historically accepted view (see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Giving "equal validity" can create a false balance). I'd like to reiterate that it's not me who's raising concerns about the sources: it's scholars who are doing so. This review of Escaping Auschwitz [8] describes Linn's arguments as out of date and missing the post-Arendt scholarship on the issue. This review [9] describes the book as "provocative"; unfortunately, I don't have access to the rest of the review.
I'm not sure where the "Hungarian Jews would have resisted" is discussed in the article, unless it's Bauer discussing "internalization." By the way, Bauer's remarks are actually part of his discussion of Vrba's accusations against the Bratislava Working Group and the Jewish council in Bratislava, and are not related to the Hungarian issue (see this diff). This needs to be made clear in the article, or we risk misrepresenting Bauer. Catrìona (talk) 16:56, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I think the article makes clear that scholars regard certain of Vbra's claims as inaccurate. Where in the article is there doubt on that point, in your view? I'd appreciate a reply to my previous questions about which scholarly sources are missing and which refs are missing page numbers. SarahSV (talk) 17:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
I never said that scholarly sources are missing. In this article, anecdotes (see the Klein material which you restored) and minority viewpoints are given too much weight (see Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history)#Reliable sources for weighting and article structure—balance and due weight is governed by scholarly sources). If the Klein material had been described in a secondary source, it would be reasonable to include it, but as Klein's autobiography, it should not be included here. Also, I think that describing Ladislaus Löb as a "scholar" makes it sound as if he is a historian, rather than a professor of German, and hopefully another scholar can be found so that the plural is accurate. You're right that the Klein cite appears to be the only one missing a page number, but that's still one bad cite too many for a FA. And he should not be cited for "historical consensus," because he is not a historian. Catrìona (talk) 17:32, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
You wrote: "Many other citations are missing page numbers". As you now acknowledge that this isn't true, I'd appreciate if you would strike it. The Klein cite is not a "bad cite"; as I said, it refers to the whole article, and cites aren't needed in leads anyway. You also wrote: "only a minority of footnotes reference scholarly sources". This also isn't true. If you believe that some sources are missing or underused, please be more specific. As for Ruth Linn, this is a biography and her book Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting (Cornell University Press, 2004), is about the biography subject, so it's appropriate to use it. And Klein's paper is interesting because it illustrates Vrba's point (that people would have fled had they known) and Bauer's (that they would not have fled because they would not have believed it). In Klein we have both. I don't know what you mean about citing him for "historical consensus". SarahSV (talk) 18:08, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
If the Klein anecdote were really as important as our article has it, we would expect it to be repeated in secondary sources, which it isn't. It certainly doesn't illustrate Bauer's point, since he was discussing Vrba's allegations that the Working Group and the Jewish Center in Bratislava withheld information about the Final Solution:

We must differentiate between information and its internalization, or"knowledge"; and in this case there is absolutely no proof that information on planned mass murder, as opposed to pogromlike shootings and other persecutions, was received during the early months of deportation. Internalization—that is, acceptance of information as correct and thinking in accordance with that information, and later possibly action—is a complicated process. During the Holocaust countless individuals received information and rejected it, suppressed it, or rationalized about it, were thrown into despair without any possibility of acting on it, or seemingly internalized it and then behaved as though it had never reached them. This is true not only of people who were outside the kingdom of death but also of people within it.

When Vrba was deported in June, the UZ [Jewish Center in Bratislava] had information about pogroms, suffering, and starvation, not about the "Final Solution." In addition, Vrba claims that five months after he was deported, he still saw, in Auschwitz, transports of Slovak Jews who were unaware of what was awaiting them. If he was deported on June 30, five months thereafter was November. But there were no transports in November. The transport of September 23—most likely before Vrba reached Auschwitz—had to be put together by the security groups chasing and hunting Jews; by that time the Jews knew what was awaiting them in a general way. They were, in fact, explicitly warned by the UZ, which is why the authorities had to fill the transport quota with inmates of the labor camps, who had been promised immunity from deportation.(Bauer 1994, p. 72)

I haven't yet read what Bauer said about the Hungary deportations, but I find the confusion between 1942 Slovakia and 1944 Hungary to be problematic because it misrepresents Bauer, and his position on Jewish resistance to deportation. Also, the Slovakia deportations probably deserves more coverage than is given in this article.
According to WP:CITELEAD, "The verifiability policy advises that material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and direct quotations, should be supported by an inline citation... editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material." Since the statement in the lede is a) contentious and b) not directly repeated in the article, it should be cited—to the "Holocaust historians" who think that a warning would have not been effective.
Again, I repeat that my concerns are not about "missing" sources but rather about weight, neutrality, and sourcing. Addressing these concerns may involve removing some material from the article, rather than adding it. Catrìona (talk) 18:58, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Please assume that I'm familiar with the policies; there's no need to keep quoting them. What is contentious about the lead paragraph you're discussing?

There was a delay of several weeks before the report was distributed widely enough to gain the attention of governments. Mass transports of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz began on 15 May 1944 at a rate of 12,000 people a day. Most went straight to the gas chambers. Vrba argued until the end of his life that the deportees would have refused to board the trains had the report been distributed wider and publicized sooner, a position generally not accepted by Holocaust historians.

SarahSV (talk) 19:04, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

It is contentious because it doesn't make it clear who the "historians" are and what their actual statements on the possible impact of earlier dissemination of the report were. In my opinion the entire issue is contentious because it relates to Kastner's alleged collaborationism. In fact, it doesn't need to be contentious; the material has now been challenged (by me). I suggest that the best way to resolve the dispute is to cite the actual historians who have put forth this argument. Catrìona (talk) 19:26, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Re: "the actual historians who have put forth this argument", which argument exactly? SarahSV (talk) 19:38, 21 July 2018 (UTC)
Historians who contradicted Vrba's claim that "deportees would have refused to board the trains had the report been distributed more widely and publicized sooner" Catrìona (talk) 19:49, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Two comments. (1) Friling's "Arrows in the Dark" mentions Vrba extremely briefly and doesn't deserve mention. (2) Ruth Linn's book is not a history book about the Holocaust but a study of the reception and dissemination of ideas. She is clearly qualified for that, and the article also makes clear her personal involvement. I am completely sure that she belongs in the article; details can always be negotiated. Zerotalk 01:57, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Catriona, I added Bauer 2002 to that bundle, but this is an argument lots of historians make; it isn't a contentious point. I removed the long Bauer quote you added because the section directly after that in Bauer would be more appropriate; if you feel a quote is needed there, I'm willing to type it up. I've restored the material you removed. I'd appreciate it if you would respect WP:BRD and gain consensus for these edits. SarahSV (talk) 02:05, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
As far as I understand it, BRD recommends 1) making changes 2) discussing changes if they prove controversial. I've already put forward my argument that the quote from Amir doesn't belong. Perhaps I missed your argument to the contrary? Catrìona (talk) 02:29, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Break

Please propose edits here, explain why they're improvements, and wait for consensus to form. You're trying to make extensive edits to an FA in a rush. I can't suddenly devote myself full-time to this, especially not at the moment, as I'm recovering from flu or something. I'd appreciate it if you would slow down, explain the point of each edit, and wait for a response (which may not be immediate). SarahSV (talk) 02:35, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

Then I'll quote remarks I made in my ongoing listing of significant issues with the article above: "the quote from Amir seems unnecessarily polemical, especially since he doesn't seem to be a widely regarded historian, and is probably given undue weight." For some reason, the introductions to academic history books are often written by little known authors and frequently include sensational claims that the main authors don't necessarily agree with. If that quote is kept, I would be concerned about the translation. I don't speak Hebrew, so I can't check it. The book was published when Vrba was still alive; wouldn't the authors be worried about libel claims for what is clearly a personal attack on him? Not to mention the extreme tastelessness of the statement. Catrìona (talk) 04:10, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Amir has been removed. SarahSV (talk) 05:59, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
Vrba's "figure of 1,750,000 murdered should be compared to the number of people historians believe were killed before his escape, around 600,000-700,000." Catrìona (talk) 14:04, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
I've added the USHMM figures for 1940–1945. SarahSV (talk) 17:17, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
That doesn't address my concern. I can understand that there isn't a scholarly figure of deaths from the time that Vrba was there, but I still think that we should, in fewer words, state the overall number killed, and also the number of Hungarian Jews killed on arrival after Vrba left (320,000, according to the same source that you cited.) Otherwise, we're comparing the number killed in the entire operation of the camp versus the limited period that Vrba was there and based his estimates on. (edit: perhaps something like "Scholars agree that 1.1 million people died at Auschwitz, including at least 320,000 Hungarian Jews who arrived after Vrba's escape." I don't think it's necessary to state exactly who died. We should also challenge Vrba's figure that 90 per cent of Jews arriving at Birkenau were being killed, because the actual figure was about 75% according to the USHMM.)
Regarding the Klein section, not only is it anecdotal and given excessive weight, I don't think that it helps elucidate anything, as you claimed earlier. It creates a false impression that
1) there was no credible, available information about the Final Solution before the Vrba-Wetzler report (see Bauer 2002, p. 223-224, 233, 235, etc.: "This information, as we have seen, was very widespread; those who were ready to accept it as true did not need the protocols to convince them; everyone else rejected it")
2) that a significant number of Jews, who chose to believe the news of the Final Solution, could have individually escaped. (see Bauer 2002 p. 235)
First, Klein would have had privileged access to information due to his job with the Jewish Council, which enabled him to receive the report—the fact that a few individuals received copies is mostly irrelevant, since the distribution of the report to Jews did not affect the situation as a whole—and second, Klein's job presumably exempted him from the ghettoization process, which would have prevented his escape. Showing this anecdote without the hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews who were not so lucky, were ghettoized, had no access to information, and no opportunity to escape boarding the trains (Bauer 2002 p. 235), leaves a false impression of events. I think it should be completely removed. Catrìona (talk) 22:01, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about Klein. For example, he "would have had privileged access". He did have privileged access; that's the point of his paper; it's why he's in the article; and it's arguably why he's alive.
Are you saying he is wrong when he writes the following, after reading the report? "I could now clearly see what had happened to my grandmother and to my uncles after they were deported from their village. I could also see what fate was being prepared for me and our remaining family as well. Intellectual satisfaction—because I knew that this had to be the truth. I immediately believed the report because it made sense. Nothing else made sense." Is your argument that he in fact already knew at that point (as did all or most Hungarian Jews), and he later pretended that he hadn't known? SarahSV (talk) 14:38, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
I did not question the accuracy of Klein's recollection. What I said was that his experience was unrepresentative of the overall experiences of Hungarian Jews at the time, and therefore leaves a false impression of the possibility of taking action based on the report. Catrìona (talk) 15:14, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Was it unrepresentative with reference to what he knew before he saw the report? Your argument seems to be that they all knew (in some sense) anyway. But Wiesel also talks about not having known. I'd appreciate it if you would list some sources that support your position, apart from Bauer, so that it's clearer what your argument is. SarahSV (talk) 15:23, 23 July 2018 (UTC)
Bauer certainly did not say that every single Hungarian Jew knew about what had happened to Jews in other countries. Usually, a single RS is sufficient for a claim, unless it's an extraordinary claim, but since you asked, see Judit Molnár, The Foundation and Activities of the Hungarian Jewish Council, March 20-July 7, 1944 Yad Vashem Studies 30, 93-123, 2002:
'Members of the Jewish Council admit that they were aware of the fate Eichmann’s unit intended for them. As Samu Stern wrote in 1945, “...I knew what they had done in all the occupied countries of Central Europe, and I knew their operation was a long series of murders and looting.” His deputy, Ernö Pető, also said in 1945: “We knew about the fate of the Jews abroad, in Poland and Slovakia."' According to Molnár and other historians (see Robert Rozett, The Relationship between Rescue and Revolt: Jewish Rescue and Revolt in Slovakia and Hungary During the Holocaust, Ph.D. Dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1987, pp. 75- 80.), the average Hungarian Jew had plenty of access to information via radio broadcasts, rumors of massacres in the east, refugees from Slovakia and Poland, etc. but refused to believe them.
The knowledge was only a small part of Bauer's argument. Mainly, he claimed that because the Jews were already shut up in ghettos (see Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary), and gentile Hungarians were hostile, escape was impossible for the vast majority. Also, the youth movements smuggled warnings into ghettos, but people refused to believe them (see Asher Cohen, The Halutz Resistance in Hungary 1942- 1944; Munkácsi, Hogyan történt, p. 82; Leni Yahil, The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 642-643.).
I noticed that you found some secondary sources for the Klein anecdote. I had assumed based on your previous comments that such sources did not exist. I wouldn't be opposed to retaining the anecdote if it were condensed, made less prominent in the text, the image removed, and it made clear that this was the exception, not the rule, to have an opportunity to escape. Catrìona (talk) 05:46, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
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