TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IV: The Alleged Extermination Facilities in Treblinka 143
11. Cremation Facility
�ukaszkiewicz writes: 415
“In Treblinka there were no crematoria in the form of ovens, only
primitive facilities in the form of grates.”
Had Treblinka been a ‘pure extermination camp,’ then it would have been
the sheerest insanity not to construct crematoria. All important concentration
camps – Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg,
Neuengamme, Groß-Rosen, Niederhagen, Ravensbrück – were equipped with
stationary or mobile crematorium furnaces. Lublin/Majdanek and Auschwitz-
Birkenau, which supposedly functioned simultaneously as concentration and
extermination camps, possessed several crematoria: the former camp had two
of them with seven muffles altogether, 416 the latter, five crematoria with a total
of 52 muffles (although not all functioning in the same time period). 417 Why
did Himmler not provide for the building of even a single furnace for an alleged
pure extermination camp?
It gets even crazier: on December 4, 1941, Himmler himself had ordered
through the SS Main Office for Budget and Buildings “4 pieces of Topf 4muffled
double cremation furnaces” from the Topf firm in Erfurt for the White
Russian city of Mogilev, which was then under German military administration
418 and where the transit camp for POWs no. 185 under the command of
Major Wittmer was located. 419 But on December 30, 1941, merely half a furnace
(four muffles) was shipped to Mogilev; two others were then installed in
crematoria IV and V of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 1½ more ovens (12 muffles)
remained temporarily in storage at the Topf firm at Himmler’s disposal. 420 On
August 16, 1943, the SS Administrator at the Senior SS and Police Chief’s office
in the General Gouvernement delivered a memo to all Central Construction
Offices of the General Gouvernement (occupied Poland) as well as to the
Construction Office of Radom, in which they were informed that Office CIII
of the SS-WVHA had available “1½ cremation furnaces = 12 muffles” and
asked that notification be given by September 1, if the officials named required
them. 421 We know only the response of the construction director of
Trawniki, a subcamp to Majdanek, who wrote: 422
415 USSR-344. GARF, 7445-2-126, p. 321 (p. 5 of the report).
416 See J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 271), Chapter V.
417 See C. Mattogno, “The Crematoria Ovens of Auschwitz and Birkenau” in: G. Rudolf (ed.),
op. cit. (note 81), pp. 373-412.
418 Letter from the Head Office of Budget and Construction to the Topf firm, dated December 4,
1941, RGVA, 501-1-328, pp. 347f.
419 Christian Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, p. 510.
420 Letter of the Topf firm to the Central Construction Office unit of Auschwitz, RGVA, 502-1-
327, pp. 43-45.
421 WAPL, Central Construction Office, 268, p, 132.
422 WAPL, Central Construction Office, 268, p. 147.