TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

64 Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf: Treblinka
The Polish historian Józef Marsza�ek furnishes a summary no less dishonest
when he writes: 144
“In this section [of the report] the site and topography of the camp are
shown exactly, and the number of the gas chambers [145] as well as their
structure with the facilities for the gassing [146] of the victims are described.”
We now turn to the question of how the miraculous transformation of the
steam chambers into gas chambers occurred.
4. From Steam Chambers to Carbon Monoxide
Chambers
In August 1944, the Soviets occupied the area around Treblinka and conducted
a military forensic investigation with examination of the camp grounds
as well as witness interviews. 147 The murder method most frequently mentioned
by the witnesses differed from those already mentioned and consisted
of the evacuation of air from hermetically sealed rooms by means of a vacuum
pump driven by an engine. This engine, which at first was merely said to have
been used to run the pump, was to gradually transmogrify into a murder
weapon – at first, in connection with the evacuation of air, then becoming,
thanks above all to Jankiel Wiernik, the only murder instrument, by which the
victims were killed with carbon monoxide gas.
The murder technique of suffocation by pumping out air was described by
two witnesses in particular. Abe Kon, a former Treblinka prisoner, stated on
August 17, 1944: 148
“I was sent into the Treblinka camp in October 1942 with my relatives
– father, mother, two sisters, a brother. […] The naked people walking by
were struck by whips. They were walking to a building, which had been
nicely built with cement. A Jewish symbol, the ‘Star of David,’ was attached
to the house. At the entrance to the ‘bath’ stood a Ukrainian with a
knife and whip. He stabbed those who did not want to enter with the knife
144 Józef Marsza�ek, “Rozpoznanie obozów �mierci w Be�zcu, Sobiborze, e Treblince przez wywiad
Armii Krajowej i Delegatury Rz�du Rzeczyspolitej Polskiej na Ktaju” (The Reconnaissance
of the Death Camps Be��ec, Sobibór, and Treblinka by the Intelligence Service of the
Homeland Army and the Delegation of the Government of the Republic of Poland in the
Homeland), in: Biuletyn G�ównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni przeciwko narodowi polskiemu /
Instytutu Pami�ci Narodowe, vol. XXXV, Warsaw 1993, p. 42.
145 “komór gazowych”
146 “do gazowania”
147 See following chapter.
148 GARF, 7021-115-11, pp. 33f.