TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IV: The Alleged Extermination Facilities in Treblinka 153
13. Witness Testimonies about Cremations
That such a mass cremation of many hundreds of thousands of bodies was
not a real event follows, finally, from the glaring contradictions between the
different eyewitness narratives.
As already mentioned, according to the official version of Treblinka ultimately
agreed upon, there were supposedly two cremation grates of 30 m × 3
m in size, which were located on the grounds of the camp and which could
each incinerate up to 3,500 bodies. However, in the original version, the witnesses
placed the grates in the trenches. According to Szyja Warszawski, the
cremation facility, which was incorrectly termed by him a “furnace,” was 449
“[…] a pit 25 m in length, 20 m wide, and 5-6 m deep, with a grate out
of rails on the bottom of the pit, which constituted an air vent.”
Abe Kon stated for the record: 450
“[The bodies] were burned in a specially manufactured furnace, which
could hold up to 6,000 bodies. The furnace was filled with bodies. These
had gasoline and petroleum poured over them and were burned. The cremation
lasted up to an hour.”
Apart from Abe Kon himself, the witnesses Hejnoch Brenner and Samuel
Rajzman agreed on the following version: 451
“The furnace – that was a large trench 200-300 m long and 5-6 m deep,
excavated with an excavator. Three rows of reinforced concrete poles oneand-a-half
meters high each were driven into the bottom of the trench. The
poles were connected with one another by crossbeams. On these crossbeams
were laid rails at intervals of 5 to 7 cm. This was a giant furnace
grate. Narrow-gauge tracks were brought up to the edges of the trench.”
This variation was also adopted by Vassili Grossmann, who made his courtesy
visit to Treblinka in September 1944 and was able to speak with the witnesses
already questioned by the Soviets. 452
But there would not have been room for such an enormous grate on the
property of ‘Camp II’ of Treblinka II, whose longest side was only 188 m.
Subsequently, in the Polish investigative protocols, the grates migrated in
wondrous fashion from out of the pits to the surface of the ground, and their
dimensions shrank severely.
According to the witness Henryk Reichmann, five to six grates were installed,
each of which was able to hold 2,500 bodies at a time. 453 Witness
449
GARF, 7021-115-11, p. 16.
450
Statement of August 1944, GARF, 7021-115-9, p. 33.
451
Report of August 24, 1944, GARF, 7021-115-9, p. 109.
452
W. Grossmann, Treblinski Ad, op. cit. (note 23), p. 191. Likewise the German version, Die
Hölle von Treblinka, op. cit. (note 26), p. 33.
453
Statement of December 1945, in: Z. �ukaszkiewicz, Obóz strace� w Treblince, op. cit. (note
38), pp. 31f.