TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter II: The Development of the Idea of Treblinka as an Extermination Camp 61
The gates of death open – but the dead bodies somehow cannot be
pulled out individually: for they have all clumped together with one another
and stiffened under the influence of the water vapor.
Water is fetched from a nearby well and the bodies are sprinkled with it
so the gravediggers can carry away the corpses. These are loosened by it,
one from the other, and it is easier to remove them. Their appearance has
not changed, aside from a violet coloration of the head and the back side
[sic].
Now the dead are loaded onto the ramp, conducted over a railway to
the cemetery in the mass graves, where the Kapus bring their task to an
end. (See the almost identical description in the article by Tymon Terlecki
‘Alle Juden raus,’ cited by us on page 18 in ‘L’extermination des Juifs
polonais IV’). [138]
By many hundred thousands, Jews from all regions of Europe have
been exterminated in this way in Tremblinki alone.
The Camp Orchestra
But the camp of Tremblinki had another ‘specialty.’ To wit, the Jewish
Arthur Gold Orchestra (see plan) gave concerts there, and it had the duty
of playing for those who were being led to their death!!!! At the same moment
as thousands of Jews were perishing in the gas chambers, the musicians
had to play cheerful melodies. Whichever of them refused to do it
was hanged up by his feet with his head down. Several of the musicians
were seized by madness in the middle of playing. The artists, one after the
other, jumped willy-nilly amongst the crowd of people who were waiting
for their turn, and they bellowed with voice breaking and face madly distorted
‘Frait och, yidelach, ir got zum tot mit klezemer!’ (Enjoy yourselves,
you Jews, you are going to death with music). Then the German bullets
whizzed, and they sank under them to become a lifeless lump on the
ground. After this the orchestra was brought up to strength again and the
performance was repeated every time.”
In a report dealing with alleged German crimes in Poland, authored by the
Polish government for the Nuremberg Court and presented by the Soviets as
Document USSR-93, the following is written regarding Treblinka: 139
138 This article appeared on November 7, 1943, in no. 45 of the political newspaper Wiadomosci
Polskie, published in London, in which Tymon Terlecki quoted longer sections from the already
cited report of November 15, 1942.
139 USSR-93, English version. The Republic of Poland in the case against: 1. German war
criminals. 2. Their corporate bodies and organizations, designated under Charge no. 1 before
the International War Court, p. 44. An indication as to the report’s credibility is given by the
inclusion of a chapter entitled “A Soap Factory of Human Fat” following the section on
Treblinka!