TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IV: The Alleged Extermination Facilities in Treblinka 159
These 3,000 kg of hair, which was transported in the railway car mentioned
above, therefore came from many haircuts given to prisoners at Auschwitz
and Lublin in 1942.
b. Shoes
The September 10, 1943, Wehrmacht bill of lading cited by Gumkowski
and Rutkowski mentions the dispatch of a railway car with 5,200 kg of shoes
of unknown origin to Lublin. To how many pairs does this correspond? If one
assumes an average weight of 260 grams for each pair of shoes, then 5,200 kg
amount to 20,000 pairs of shoes. If one had taken the shoes from all the Jews
(allegedly) deported to Treblinka, then the 870,000 pairs of shoes would have
had a weight of (870,000×0.260=) 226,200 kg, and (226,200÷5,200=) 43.5
railway cars would have been required!
It is known that the Soviets found about 800,000 pairs of shoes in the Lublin/Majdanek
camp. The Polish historian Czes�aw Rajca, who is on the staff of
the Majdanek Museum, wrote about this: 475
“It was assumed that this [the quantity of shoes] came from prisoners
killed in the camp. From documents, which later came to light, we know
that in Majdanek there was a depot, to which shoes were sent from other
camps.”
c. Articles of Clothing
As for the 50 railway cars with “articles of clothing of the Waffen-SS”
mentioned in the Wehrmacht bill of lading dated “Treblinka, the 13th of September
1942,” they would have contained 337.5 metric tons of clothes altogether,
or 6¾ in each boxcar, if we assume the same amount per railway car as
listed above for the rags (2,700t/400). However, if each of the (allegedly)
870,000 Jews deported to Treblinka had worn or (along with extra clothing,
pillows, and blankets) brought along 10 kg worth of article of clothing, and
had these mountains of clothing been collected after the murder of the victims,
then this would have amounted to 8,700 metric tons. For their transport nearly
1,300 railway cars would have been needed!
In comparison with this enormous amount, the railway cars with shoes of
unknown origin and the 50 cars with Waffen-SS clothing, the existence of
which is supported by documents, sound almost ridiculous. They furnish not
the least bit of proof for a mass extermination in Treblinka.
In Lublin, incidentally, there were still other facilities for the collection and
recycling of textiles. The most important of these were the “Lublin Fur and
Clothing Workshops,” which took in clothing from various camps.
475
C. Rajca, Problem liczby ofiar w obozie na Majdanku, Tom XIV, Zeszyty Majdanka, Lublin
1992, p. 127.