TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

58 Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf: Treblinka
it also contains many new elements, especially in relation to the killing technique,
which probably stem from a different source. On the grounds of its importance,
the document, 134 which is as good as unknown to specialists, deserves
to be cited in toto. On the one hand, Silberschein speaks of “gas chambers”
and of “gas, which flows out of pipes,” while on the other hand he says
that the bodies had been clumped together “under the influence of the water
vapor.” Thus, either Silberschein (correctly) regarded water vapor as a gas or
he was not certain of the killing technique.
The occurrence of many improper linguistic expressions is explained by
the fact that it has been translated from the French by a person not fully in
command of German. It reads as follows: 135
“Tremblinki – The Main Extermination Camp
The small village of Tremblinki lies on the Warsaw-Bialostock [sic] rail
line. The main extermination camp, three times as large as that of Lublin,
was located not far from the village. It was at first set up as a concentration
camp for Jews and Poles; but in March 1942, the Germans transformed
it into an extermination camp for Jews only. They reconstructed the
camp expressly for this and equipped it with gas experimental rooms and
ovens.
The Camp
The camp was situated in the midst of dense forests, entirely cut off
from the outside world, and was reachable by means of a railway track
with the Warsaw-Bialostock main line. It encompassed an area of 100
acres and is surrounded by the thickest barbed wire.
It consisted of three sections: the actual camp; the extermination camp,
and an open square. The actual camp has three blocks: a men’s camp, a
women’s camp, and between these two a children’s camp. [136]
A three-meter wide anteroom divides the inside of each block into two
parts. From the anteroom doors open into the cells. Each cell measures 36
m 2 with a height of no more than two meters [… 137 ]. Each structure was 40
× 50 m in size. Aside from this, two more elongated buildings, each about
120 × 150 m in size, were constructed later as a men’s camp (not shown in
the plan).
The extermination facilities took up approximately the same space as
the accommodation spaces and contained a dressing room (see plan). The
dressing room contained a reception room for the camp administration, an
anteroom, and the actual undressing room. The entrance to the dressing
134 In his book Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor (note 72), which is accepted as the standard work,
Yitzhak Arad does not devote one word to this report.
135 A. Silberschein, Die Judenausrottung in Polen, Geneva 1944, third series, pp. 33-20.
136 See Document 3 in the Appendix.
137 Two illegible words follow.