TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter II: The Development of the Idea of Treblinka as an Extermination Camp 51
2. The Main Killing Method: Steam Chambers
On October 15, 1942, Emmanuel Ringelblum noted in his “ghetto chronicle”:
123
“Information from the gravediggers (Jakob Rabinowicz), the Jews from
Stoczek, who have escaped from the trains loaded with objects, gold, and
cash. Congruent description of the ‘bath,’ the gravediggers with golden
patches on the knees.
Method of killing: gas, steam, electricity.” 124
Until April 1943, the journalist Eugenia Szajn-Lewin lived in the Warsaw
Ghetto and kept a diary during this time. She recorded what was said about
Treblinka in the ghetto until the end of 1942: 125
“The worst thing is death in Treblinka. By now, all know of Treblinka.
There they cook people alive. They know by now that Bigan has escaped
from Treblinka. […]
He [Bigan] will build halls like the ones in Treblinka. Everything will
be modern: the boilers that are heated by current, the steam-gas in there,
the floor movable and sloping. ‘There I will drive in the Germans, all naked.
Many, many Germans, so that every corner is made use of, every centimeter.’
And from the boilers the gaseous steam is conducted through the
pipes, the boilers are red, and the steam… a hellish boiling bath. Four
minutes suffice, then the floor flap automatically drops down, and the slimy
mass of red, curled bodies flows away into the cesspit. And finished, the
pits are simply filled with chlorine, and there is no more trace of what was
once alive. ‘All this lasts only seven minutes, you hear me?’”
On November 15, 1942, the resistance movement of the Warsaw Ghetto,
operating in the underground, composed a long article entitled “Likwidacja
�ydowskiej Warszawy” (Liquidation of Jewish Warsaw), which contained a
detailed description of Treblinka 126 together with a sketch of the camp. 127 Due
to the importance of this article, 128 it deserves to be reproduced here in its entirety
despite its length. It was sent to the Polish government-in-exile in Lon-
123
Emmanuel Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego, ed. by Arthur Eisenbach, Cztelnik,
Warsaw 1983, p. 416.
124
Deaths due to electric current were generally imputed at that time to the Be��ec camp.
125
Eugenia Szajn-Lewin, Aufzeichnungen aus dem Warschauer Ghetto. Juli 1942 bis April
1943, Reclam Verlag, Leipzig 1994, pp. 83f.
126
“Likwidacja �ydowskiej Warszawy,” in: Biuletyn �ydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, Warsaw,
January-June 1951, no. 1, pp. 59-126.
127
This sketch is not found in the article listed in the preceding note.
128
The author of this chapter pointed out this report in 1985, translating the most essential passages
concerning Treblinka. See Carlo Mattogno, Il rapporto Gerstein, op. cit. (note 96), pp.
167-170.