TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IV: The Alleged Extermination Facilities in Treblinka 147
bers were loaded on the grate and then burned. When it was seen that this
system worked, the corpses, which had been put into the body pits in the
preceding months, were also retrieved, again with the help of a large excavator,
and then likewise incinerated in the manner described.”
According to the plan Jankiel Wiernik drew in 1945, as well as that presented
at the trial in Düsseldorf, 429 two such cremation facilities were in fact
constructed. The cremation is supposed to have taken place between April and
the end of July 1943, 430 so that nearly all 860,000 bodies are supposed to have
been incinerated within 122 days, i.e. 7,000 per day on two grates, or 3,500
per day per grate.
How large was such a grate? In the version of Wiernik’s work One Year in
Treblinka, published by A. Donat, one reads: 431
“This is the way in which he [432] got the Inferno started: He put into operation
an excavator which could dig up 3,000 corpses at one time. A fire
grate made from railroad tracks was placed on concrete foundations 100
to 150 meters in length. The workers piled the corpses on the grate and set
them on fire.”
The particulars given here are clearly the fruit of a later insertion, since the
American English translation of Wiernik’s 1944 account simply reads: 433
“This is the way he got the hell started. He put a machine for exhuming
the corpses into operation, which could, in one motion, dig up many, many
dead bodies. A fire grate made of railway ties was laid out on cement
foundations, and workmen had to pile the corpses on the grating and set
them on fire.”
If one takes into consideration the fact that 3,000 bodies take up a volume
of about (3,000×0.045 =) 135 m 3 , the claim, according to which the shovel of
the excavator could be loaded with 3,000 bodies at a time, will evoke only
amusement. The length of the grate (100 to 150 m) contradicts the trial documents.
According to Arad, the grate was 30 m wide, 434 but this too contradicts
the verdict of the Düsseldorf Court of Assizes, according to which the grate
consisted of “5 to 6 train rails of about 25 to 30 m in length.” Since emaciated
bodies, which easily disintegrated, were burned on both grates, the gap between
two rails had to be small and could at most be permitted to amount to
50 to 60 cm, so that one can assume a width of the grate of approximately
three meters. The width given by Feig – one meter – is obviously impossible.
429
See Documents 5 and 12 in the Appendix.
430
Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 72), p. 177. According to Arad, 7600 people were gassed and cremated
in Treblinka in August 1943.
431
A. Donat, op. cit. (note 4), pp. 170f.
432
An Oberscharführer not mentioned by name, who is probably supposed to be the phantom
figure of Herbert Floss.
433
J. Wiernik, A Year in Treblinka, op. cit. (note 165), p. 29.
434
Y. Arad, op. cit. (note 72), p. 174.