TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter III: Investigations, Camp Plans, Statistics 103
Arad names about 140 localities, from which deportations to Treblinka are
supposed to have left, and supplies in each case the exact number of the deported.
Upon what source does he rely in doing this? He refers to censuses of
the Jewish Councils in general, to memoirs and diaries of survivors, some
Jewish studies and “documents of the German railway administration”, concerning
which he explains: 255
“If we consider that each fully loaded boxcar transported 100 to 150
people, we are able to determine the approximate number of the Jews
taken along in each transport.”
With this we wind up once again with Judge �ukaszkiewicz’s method!
In fact Arad – without admitting it – relies principally on Anglo-Jewish
historian Martin Gilbert’s Atlas of the Holocaust, first published in London in
1982. This work contains an abundance of numerical data about the deportation
of Jews but maintains a total silence on the sources. Gilbert’s figures for
Poland – and, in particular, the deportations to Treblinka – are for the most
part the product of fantasy: he has done nothing more than assign numbers
snatched out of thin air to individual locations from which real and imagined
transports departed; numbers whose total adds up to the predetermined figure,
840,000! 256 Even a fleeting glance at the tables shows this beyond a doubt. For
example, table 168 shows approximately sixty locations of the Bia�ystok district,
from which transports are supposed to have departed for Treblinka on
November 2, 1942. To this endless column of mostly unknown small country
towns Gilbert allots extremely exact numbers of deportations. 257 If there had
really been precise figures for these small towns, they would naturally have
been cited first and foremost by the Polish researchers and historians; but, as
we have seen, the latter had to confine themselves to hypothetical enumerations
of trains and cars.
This means Gilbert’s data on the transports to Treblinka were for the most
part products of his fantasy and are devoid of scientific value. Exactly the
same thing applies to Arad’s transport lists, which are based upon Gilbert’s
book.
In 1995, a little book appeared from the pen of one Manfred Burba, which
contained statistics and a bar graph indicating the number of Treblinka victims.
Arranged by district and nation of origin, the numerical portion appears
as follows: 258
255
Ibid., p. 381.
256
M. Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1993, map
no. 217, p. 167.
257
Ibid., p. 133. Here a few examples: Wasosz: 50; Gonadz: 1,280; Lubotyn: 174; Wasilków:
1,180; Mocki: 756; K�ukówo: 68, etc. For some places he gives much higher numbers:
Bielsk: 5,000; Suchowola: 5,100; Krynki: 5,000; Siematyce: 6,000, etc.
258
Manfred Burba, Treblinka. Ein NS-Vernichtungslager im Rahmen der “Aktion Reinhard”,
Göttingen 1995, p. 18.