TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter II: The Development of the Idea of Treblinka as an Extermination Camp 63
them. The document mentions the extremely difficult conditions under
which the prisoners are kept, the daily killings among these Jews, and that
their life expectancy in this camp was no more than two weeks. In the description
of the way the transports were treated, there is reference to the
deceptive ploys of the Germans and a description of the extermination
process from the moment the people disembarked on the platform – the
way they were tortured – until they were led into the gas chambers, as well
as the system of burying the corpses. In conclusion, it stated that by then
two million Jews had been murdered in Treblinka – the majority of Polish
Jewry. The report concludes by asking why the new gas chambers were
built, since indeed the majority of Polish Jewry had already been killed,
and states that, according to one eyewitness, the Germans had already
killed a group of Poles in the middle of August.
This report is the first in which there is a comprehensive description of
the Treblinka extermination camp. The facts are, for the most part, correct.
Their source is escapees from the camp who reached the Warsaw ghetto
and who gave testimony for the Ringelblum Archive and to Jewish underground
groups in the Warsaw ghetto. This report is based therefore on the
descriptions of witnesses who had seen for themselves the process of extermination,
who had lived in the camp for days or weeks as prisoners,
who had been employed at various jobs, and who had succeeded in escaping.
The facts that they related on the basis of what they had seen were accurate,
but the reference to two million Jews murdered was incorrect. In
the period to which this report refers, one-fourth to one-third of the number
cited in the report had been murdered. Also the detail about the murder
of a group of Poles in Treblinka was incorrect.”
The coarse falsifications, of which Arad, regarded by the official historiography
as the most renowned Treblinka expert, is guilty here, make one imagine
his mortal embarrassment in the face of this historical source of such unusual
importance. The source, however, contradicts one of the main pillars of
precisely this official historiography by the fact that it mentions, not diesel gas
chambers, but instead water vapor chambers as the murder weapon.
Arad claims, however, that the report contains “a description of the dozens
of new gas chambers” as well as a description of the “process of extermination,”
but he doesn’t write a single syllable about the steam chambers: instead
he shamelessly transforms them into “gas chambers”! Furthermore, he asserts
that the facts are “for the most part, correct” and that the witness testimony
was “accurate,” although the official historiography had long since banished
the steam chambers to the realm of myths.