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First, it is incorrect to say the 1.5 million figure was "never taken seriously". It was widely published in international newspapers. For millions of citizens internationally, they were hearing for the first time about "death factories" with gas chambers and crematoria where millions were murdered at Majdanek. And these weren't rumors or second-hand clandestine reports, they were claims that had been ostensibly proven by allied investigators after they conquered the camp. The entire narrative found believability with these 'investigations' from Madjanek, which preceded all others.
Secondly, as I've said, these reports and figures were submitted as evidence at the Nuremberg trials by Soviet prosecutors. So we can dismiss the claim the figures were "not taken seriously" , they were taken seriously in the international press and in the most important phase of the war crime trials. Majdanek guards were also indicted, convicted, and executed based on these wildly inflated, false claims.
The Soviet investigation of Majdanek, which claimed astronomically inflated death tolls and 7 homicidal gas chambers, stood alongside other Soviet-submitted investigatory reports on Auschwitz and the Katyn massacre at Nuremberg, the latter of which produced an investigation and eyewitnesses (!) that falsely blamed the Germans for the Katyn massacre. It so happens the signatories to the Katyn investigation were the same as the Auschwitz investigation, with the addition of the biological quack Lysenko as signatory to the Auschwitz "investigation."
The Biden Administration's Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism is Deborah Lipstadt, who is one of the most high-profile holocaust 'scholars' alive today. On the left is a 1944 New York Times article about "1.5 million murdered in Majdanek" and on the right is Deborah Lipstadt - in 1982 in the LA Times- claiming that the remains of 1.7 million Jews were found at Majdanek (note: she is actually endorsing the 1944 article in her own column). While you are completely wrong that "historians have never taken seriously the Soviet claim that 1.5 million people were murdered at Majdanek", you are correct that the claims have wildly varied - and precipitously declined throughout the decades. This is the consequence of an initial, false campaign of psychological warfare falling apart in the face of the documentary and physical evidence which was left behind at Majdanek, evidence which Revisionsits were able to point to in order to prove their case.
Hoss's testimony was extracted through torture. He was in custody when his memoirs were written, and his memoirs were published by his captors. He also testified to things we know are completely false, like the claim that 4 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, which also stood as official "history" for decades until it was revised after the fall of the Soviet Union - with no impact whatsoever on the "6 million" number. The lack of contemporary documentation indicating any campaign of mass gassings is legendary, no documents have ever been found. Post-war "confessions" like that of Rudolf Hoss, extracted under torture by British interrogators, have been used as a substitute for contemporary documents, and it should be noted that your comment references no contemporary documents, whereas if such evidence existed you would surely cite that instead of the post-war confession of a witness who was subjected to physical torture.
It would be helpful if you could cite any evidence that shows those two gas chambers were used to murder inmates with Zyklon B. The inconvenient fact for the Majdanek Museum is that all the witnesses cited different structures as being the center of gas chamber extermination, like the bathing facility which the Museum has now admitted conducted no homicidal gassings. So there's really no evidence at all for what you are claiming.
Lastly, you are ignoring the co-dependence of these claims. The Soviet investigations claimed 7 homicidal gas chambers, and witnesses pointed mostly to a real bathing and delousing facility as the center of mass murder. So 5 of those 7 are now admitted to have been false, including the facility which was the centerpiece of the original claims made by 'witnesses.' Any reasonable person would be suspicious that the final 2 are likewise false, and he should expect a reasonable amount of evidence to believe they were what the Soviets claimed. If I claim that 7 people were killed by a bear, but then I was exposed as lying about 5 out of 7 of those people, I should be expected to provide strong evidence that the last 2 people actually were killed by a bear.
And this is the only reason Revisionists "won" Majdanek. The evidence was captured largely intact, allowed Revisionists to find original construction orders and documents proving their theory. They were able to visit the actual structures and point out the impossibility that they were used for the purposes claimed by historians. It is notable that the ease with which Revisionists prove their case is proportional to the amount of evidence that is left behind, whereas unrevised claims about 900,000 deaths at Treblinka are only maintained because of the basic lack of any sort of contemporary evidence. If Majdanek were as thoroughly destroyed as Treblinka, it's likely the original Soviet investigation would remain intact as it has at Treblinka.
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