Remarkable Holocaust Nonsense #6: Ten Day Corpse Burning Courses

In yet another instance of absurd claims made about the Germans in World War II. I quote an assertion of Soviet origin about Wehrmacht and the SS personnel attending ten day specialised corpse burning courses in 1941.

This is reproduced from the wildly popular history of 'Nazi atrocities' named 'The Scourge of the Swastika' authored by Edward Russell (aka Lord Russell of Liverpool) who was a key figure in the Nuremberg and Tokyo War Crime Trials.

I quote:

'Special instruction was also arranged for those selected to supervise the machinery of death in extermination camps. In one camp, during the internment there of a Russian named Manusevitch who gave this information, special ten-day course on corpse-burning were held. The pupils were generally officers and senior NCOs. The chief instructor was a Colonel Schallok, who had great experience of such matters. On the site where the bodies were being burned he explained the process and how to set up a bone-crushing machine.' (1)

There are several things to notice about this claim: in the first instance it is hearsay from an alleged Soviet prisoner of war named Manusevitch. There is no other evidence for it.

In the second this particular allegation comes from 1941 when it is almost universally conceded that there were no German plans for the mass extermination of jews or other undesirables extant. (2) This allegedly came into being in early 1942 not 1941. So such a course is extremely unlikely in 1941 when there was no requirement for a mass extermination infrastructure at that time.

In the third instance the Germans, much like their Soviet counterparts, used mass graves not mass burnings for corpse disposal when special actions against Soviet partisans and/or local undesirables were carried out in 1941.

In the fourth: where would Colonel Schallok have acquired such an extensive knowledge of corpse burning in 1941? The Germans hadn't conducted any large scale open pit corpse cremations yet even according to the orthodox 'Holocaust' narrative: so where?

Russell's claim simply doesn't make any sense: does it?

References

(1) Edward Russell, 1972, [1956], 'The Scourge of the Swastika', 14th Edition, Corgi: London, p. 118

(2) Russell doesn't explicitly list the date, but it is in between two different discussions of German 'atrocities' in 1941.