TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IV: The Alleged Extermination Facilities in Treblinka 139
c. The Excavated Earth
In excavating a pit or a grave, the extract has a volume which is normally
around 10 to 25% greater than the volume of the excavated pit itself. 394 From
each of the 11 mass graves of Treblinka, (120×15×6=) 1,088 cubic meters of
earth would have been excavated, thus in all (10,800×11=) 118,800 cubic meters.
If we set the minimum of 10 % for the additional volume of the extracted
earth, then the latter would have had a volume of (118,800×1.1=) approx.
130,700 cubic meters. For purposes of illustration, let it be said that this
enormous quantity of earth would have been able to cover the entire surface
area of the Treblinka II camp with a layer nearly one meter high! If this mass
were arranged in the form of a pile 6 m high, with sides each having an angle
of 30 degrees and a width of 10 m, then its length would have amounted to
(130,700÷30�) 4.4 kilometers, covering some 44,000 m 2 ! If one constructed
such a pile of soil next to each grave, then each pile would be some 390 m
long each!
d. A Comparison with the Mass Graves of Treblinka I
As shown in Chapter III, in the year 1944 the Soviets found three mass
graves in the proximity of Treblinka I, and the Poles a further 41 in 1946. The
latter possessed a total area of 1,607 m 2 . Not a single mass grave was discovered
on the camp area itself, although this had a greater area than Treblinka II:
approximately 18 hectares. 395
The graves were located in the forest of Maliszewa, about 500 m away
from the camp. This was due to obvious considerations of hygiene and sanitation.
The pollution of water, air, and soil by decomposing corpses had been
proven scientifically a long time before the 1940s. Studies performed in the
nineteenth century had shown that the ground water in the vicinity of cemeteries
was often so severely contaminated that the water in the wells was putrid,
murky, and permeated by organic substances. In 1878, F. Selmi, Professor of
Pharmaceutical and Toxicological Chemistry at the University of Bologna,
discovered that in addition to ammonia, sulfuric acid, carbonic acid, and gaseous
hydrocarbons, a toxic alkaloid is also generated through the decomposition
of corpses, which he named ‘ptomaine.’ At about the same time, other
scientists proved that cadavers develop yet another volatile toxic substance,
‘sepsin.’ Moreover, it had already long been experimentally proven that many
pathogenic microorganisms in the soil – the cause of typhus fever being
394
G. Colombo, Manuale dell’ingegnere civile e industriale, Enrico Hoepli Editore, Milan
1926, p. 237.
395
S. Wojtczak, op. cit. (note 61), p. 120.