How does false testimony from Holocaust survivors still provide us with valuable insight to the Holocaust?

My teacher asked us this today at the end of class - it's not a quiz or homework question, just something he wanted us to think about. We had been talking about Holocaust testimony that was discovered to be either intentionally false, or simply incorrect due to a bad memory. But I really have no clue! And it IS an interesting question...what do you guys think? Because my initial reaction would be that it doesn't give us valuable insight. I mean, it's false!How does false testimony from Holocaust survivors still provide us with valuable insight to the Holocaust?
It should teach you to be more discerning in what you accept from the genuine survivors. The common elements of fake-survivor fantasies are reflections of fantasies to which all people are subject. It is therefore necessary to filter 'genuine' accounts as well as those which are false.





An example is that of the servicemen who entered Belsen Camp at the end of the Second World War. There were thousands of unburied bodies of dead inmates there, and people were shocked as they never were before or after in their lives. However - among the common false memories are (1) They were the first men in. (they can't all have been the first men in, but many will tell you they were), and (2) They remember seeing gas chambers. In fact, the gas chambers were in the camps in the East.





All policemen will tell you that eye-witness testimony is not reliable, and that it is suspicious if all 'witnesses' of a crime have identical recollections. Therefore, all historical sources should be carefully filtered, and tested one against another.How does false testimony from Holocaust survivors still provide us with valuable insight to the Holocaust?
This is an interesting question - false testimony does not tell us so much about the TRUE experiences of the Holocaust survivors, but instead tells us what they BELIEVE they experienced. This can show the legacy that these experiences left behind in the minds of the survivors, and can in some circumstances also demonstrate what these people were allowed to know - be it due to propaganda and lies told to them, or through the trauma they suffered. Often, people's perceptions of an event can be incredibly revealing, and, in the case of the Holocaust, can emphasise the suffering of these people, whether these testimonies are true or slightly inaccurate.
False testimony never provides valuable insight. However, all of the other concrete, agonizing evidence does. The pictures and videos of bodies, torture, and camps provide plenty of valuable insight. All of the evidence brought against the Germans during the Nuremberg Trials also have quite a hefty load of valuable insight. All of the evidence that upholds the Holocaust trumps a few bad memories from either aged, traumatized, or untruthful people.
If you tell a story enough times it becomes true to you. There comes a point where you cannot remember where the truth ends and the lie begins. These peoples account, historically accurate or not is true to each of them. Each of these people are still dealing wit the aftermath of what they believe happened. It might not give us insight into history but it does give us insight into the mind and how it deals with pain.
To answer your question, it does not.





You have to remember, horrible things happened to to these people and they might be blocking things out so that they don't go insane.





Also, not everyone wanted to talk about it after WWII. We'd probably have better records if we had interviewed them a little closer to the time after.
Well you ask someone what they experienced in historical context. A lot of time they just know what happened to them, they don't always understand the whole back ground. Some people have a tendency to play up what really happened to them.
i believe ive seen pictures.





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A lie is a lie. When someone is caught telling a lie about a historical event it brings the event itself in question.
your teacher sounds like a nut job...


I don't think most survivors are providing us with false accounts


I don't think they can forget the torture if they tried
You know, I really had no idea how deeply ';involved'; this Revisionist Movement was.... and how ';International'; is was.... is.





I went through this list of Revisionists, people, mostly expert people, that have refuted the testimonies of Holocaust victims.


There were Americans BUT not very many, which completely surprised me seeing all of our anti-Semitic groups, KKK, White Supremacists, etc.


There were a lot of Canadians.... British.... JEWS... and even a Moroccan and a prior Swedish Jehovah's Witness.


It was the JEWISH Revisionists that blew me away.





Oh, and the fact that Germany / West Germany will arrest AND convict your backside if they find offense with your Revisionism ideas....?????!!!!


The latest seems to be a Dr. Fredrick Toben, raised in Australia and an Australian citizen, was arrested in Mannheim, Germany, April, 1999, and was awaiting trial for being a ';holocaust denier'; for seven months. He then was tried and sentenced to ten months imprisonment.





I was always under the impression that these so-called Revisionists were hugely Anti-Semitic White Supremacists but that does not seem to be the fact.


They are Gas Chamber experts, Crematorium experts........





I am honestly finding all this very unsettling.





I don't think the testimonies of Holocaust victims were intentionally false, NOR due to being simply incorrect due to a bad memory. I believe that THEY believe what they know to be truths.





Mental torture is still the biggest of the means of torture.





They could have very well been told that 200 people a day are being cremated....but they think they only saw 100 people in line, thinking that another 100 was somewhere else being cremated....when in reality the crematorium with 5 furnaces could only cremate 45 people in a 24 hr period working day %26amp; night. What is actually happening and what you thinking is happening might not always be the same thing, but the fact of the matter WAS people WERE gased and people WERE cremated.... just how many...?





Add all that to starvation, death, medical conditions, head games, beatings, tortune......you are bound to come up with all kinds of things.





I do think that there might be some things to this information HOWEVER I don't CARE if the numbers drop to a THIRD of what they are now of Holocaust victims....IT IS THE SAME THING!





Whether Hitler and the Nazis brutally murdered 600, 6000, 600,000 or 6,000,000 Jews IT IS STILL THE SAME!





And YES, it DOES still give us incredibly valuable insight. Because the REAL things we know for a fact to BE true were still horrific enough not to change our minds. Something was going on.





Trust me, hundreds of thousands of Jews didn't sit around the ol' concentration camp, many miles apart, speaking several different languages suddenly decide to all come up with the same stories about the same things ...... oh, AND talk all the Gay and Gypsy prisoners into telling the same stories too!





Seriously, check out the sites I posted below, it's extremely interesting stuff.