TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

60 Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf: Treblinka
following appeal was displayed: ‘Have no concern about your fate! You
are all traveling only to work in the east. You yourselves will perform the
work and your women will do the housework. Before traveling on, you
have to bathe and remove the germs from your clothes. Gold and other
valuables are to be deposited at the counter, where you will get a receipt
for them.’ And really, in order to lull the belief in these promises into a
feeling of security, the Germans had established an office at the train station,
where each new arrival had to turn up and report his professional
training. After fulfillment of these ‘statistics,’ the people were brought into
the camp and at first only sent into the disinfection baths. After the bath
they were temporarily sent to the individual cells. There they were supposed
to wait until it was their turn. But for the most part, those instructed
didn’t know what fate awaited them. They still believed that they would
soon be traveling on to a place of work. This belief was even strengthened
by the fact that there were no large factory facilities in the camp and that it
had all seemed as if it were only a transit station.
The Murder Work
But when the rooms could no longer accept new arrivals, the oldest inmates
were gassed. Every day groups of a thousand people each were
brought into the gas and oven chambers. At first, as at their arrival, they
were led into the bath by the Kapus. Everyone had to take off clothing and
shoes and remained naked. For the further deception of the victims, each
was handed a little piece of soap. In the meantime, the work of putting the
discarded clothing and shoes in order was performed. Hauptmann Sauer
took them over in the reception room of the extermination facilities. He did
not miss any opportunity to flog every single person. Then the Germans
drove the women and children as the first ones into the extermination cells.
Now the final act of the extermination began:
Men and women, old people and children, all naked, take their last
walk into death. At the fore stride the women and children, then the men,
old and young, follow behind. To impel them to run faster, the Germans
strike them on head and body. Now the victims are running, tormented by
fear: their cries of dread, especially those of the women and children, ascend
to the sky. Now everybody knows where this is leading – to death. The
floor is slippery, one slips and falls. But those fallen can no longer even
stand up; for continually new victims are flung over them. The children are
thrown into the room, above the heads of their mothers. The extermination
cells fill up. When they are full, then they are hermetically sealed, from
every side the pipes open, out of which flows gas. The death of asphyxiation
reaps a quick harvest. Within a quarter hour it is all over. Then the
Kapus must go to work. With pitiless blows, the guard personnel force
them to perform their work.