TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter I: The Description of Treblinka in Historiography 33
l. Alexander Donat
In 1979 in the United States, Alexander Donat edited the anthology The
Death Camp Treblinka. In addition to the aforementioned text by Rachel Auerbach
already mentioned, which had appeared in 1946 in Yiddish and was
now published for the first time in English as “The Fields of Treblinka”, this
book also contained contributions by six other authors (Abraham Krzepicki,
Jankiel Wiernik, Samuel Willenberg, Tanhum Grinberg, Shalom Cohen, and
Samuel Rajzman). According to the introduction written by Donat himself,
these reports were composed “without dramatization, embellishments, inventions,
and hollow phrases.” 4 Just how seriously this promise is to be taken is
shown not only by the fact that the impossible horror report by R. Auerbach is
reproduced without commentary; additionally and inter alia, a text of Jankiel
Wiernik, which we shall discuss in detail later, is cited as a serious source. It
claims: 63
“When corpses of pregnant women were cremated, their bellies would
burst open. The fetus would be exposed and could be seen burning inside
the mother’s womb.”
In a review that appeared in 1981 in the Journal of Historical Review,
Horst Kehl had this to say about Donat’s anthology: 64
“If it is impossible to tear a child in half; […] if it is impossible to cram
people into half a square foot each; if it is impossible to use women as kindling
and scoop up buckets of human fat; if it is impossible to leap over a 9
foot high fence; just what other parts of this saga are true?”
m. The Main Commission’s “Encyclopedic Informer”
Also in 1979, the Polish Main Commission for the Investigation of Hitler
Crimes published an “Encyclopedic informer” on the camps and prisons existing
on Polish soil during the German occupation. With respect to the camp
Treblinka II, only the works of Wiernik, Grossmann, and �ukaszkiewicz are
cited in the bibliography, aside from trial files, archive documents, and an article
about the reports of the underground movement by Marczewska/Wa�niewski.
65 This indicates that no book on Treblinka with any claim to a scientific
method appeared between 1946 and 1979 in Poland, either.
63 In: A. Donat, op. cit. (note 4), p. 170.
64 Horst Kehl, “‘Holocaust’ Pharmacology vs. Scientific Pharmacology,” in: Journal of Historical
Review, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1981, p. 95.
65 G�ówna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polce (ed.), Obozy hitlerowski na
ziemiach polskich 1939-1945. Informator encyklopedyczny, Pa�stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe,
Warsaw 1979, p. 528.