TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter V: Treblinka Trials 167
“The accommodations of the Jewish workers, whose number was continually
changing, but which on average might be put at between 500 and
1,000, were very primitive. […]”
Not only did these up to 1,000 Jewish workers have to experience how the
Germans and Ukrainians drove their co-religionists into the gas day after day,
but they themselves always hovered on the brink of death: 490
“At their work, the Jews were driven to hurry by insults and blows from
a whip. […] For the least cause but often without any sort of reason, Jewish
workers in both parts of the camp were reviled, abused, slain, or shot
day after day. It sufficed that a Jew, according to the notion of his overseer,
was working too slowly or not carefully enough, for him to be
whipped half-dead and subsequently to be shot in the infirmary.”
However, it never occurred to the Jewish workers (at least until August 2,
1943) to mount a resistance against their tormentors and murderers, who were
far inferior to them in numbers!
The verdict has this to say concerning the measures taken to deceive the
victims at their arrival: 491
“In order to strengthen the impression in those arriving that Treblinka
was merely a transfer station for further transportation to the east for
work, large signs in German and Polish were posted on the platform or in
its direct vicinity, the gist of which read: ‘Attention Warsaw Jews! You are
in a transit camp here, from which there will be further transport to work
camps. […] For purposes of bodily hygiene, all those arriving must bathe
before further transport.’
In addition – at least in the first period of the mass killings – a member
of the German camp staff often addressed the people assembled at the train
station square and explained the same thing which was on the signs.”
Exactly one page before quoting the above passage from this verdict,
Rückerl cites the Jewish witness “Str.” as follows: 492
“I then remember the terrible confusion when the doors were flung
open in Treblinka. There were shouts from the Germans and Ukrainians,
‘get off, out.’ Even the members of the so-called Red Jewish Commandos
shouted and yelled. Then the people arriving also began to yell and complain.
I still remember that we were struck with whips. Then we were told:
‘Men to the right, women to the left and undress.’”
Naturally, under these circumstances a panic would have broken out immediately
among the approximately 2,000 new arrivals 493 each time, and the
489 Ibid., p. 212.
490 Ibid., p. 214.
491 Ibid., p. 219.
492 Ibid., p. 218.
493 Of the 50 to 60 railway cars, which each of the freight trains used in the deportations comprised,
20 at a time are supposed to have been unloaded, while the rest remained at the sta-