TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter II: The Development of the Idea of Treblinka as an Extermination Camp 69
The corpses were burned in a huge construction pit. Cement foundations
were erected on its bottom, upon which grills made from railway rails
were fixed. Under the grills burned a strong fire, into which some kind of
fluid was poured. The workers at the ovens [sic] were changed every few
days, and only rarely did one remain more than a week long at this ‘work.’
They were replaced by a fresh labor force, which came in with the new
trains day after day. In ‘reward’ for their days of labor, these prisoners
were not sent into the ‘bath,’ but were killed instead by a shot to the back
of the neck.”
At the Nuremberg Trial, where he took the witness stand on February 27,
1946, Rajzman merely spoke of the “gas chambers,” without going into any
closer detail about their structure or the type of gas used. 161
In the same year 1946, Rajzman composed an eight-page report with the title
Mój pobyt w Treblince (My Stay in Treblinka). 162 Here, he claimed that
25,000 people per day had been murdered in Treblinka, 163 but did not elaborate
on the means of killing.
By the 1950s, Rajzman had happily associated himself with the official
version of the ‘gas chambers,’ but he remained perfectly silent about the details.
In his report, published in English by Donat, he contents himself with the
following remarks: 164
“The women had to line up, and all their hair was clipped off. It was
destined for use in German mattresses. Naked, they went the road of no return,
into the gas chambers. While they undressed and walked into the gas
chambers, the Germans hit them very hard; many died from the beatings
alone. Everybody was pushing to get to the gas chamber fast, because the
Ukrainians and the Germans were beating them so hard. Everybody was
stampeding forward. The whole place was covered with blood. People
didn’t know that it would be the end there; the idea was simply to get out of
the place where they were beating you. And in doing that, they went
straight into the gas chambers.”
In these few sentences, Rajzman thus mentions the ‘gas chambers’ four
times, but spares not a word as to their structure and manner of functioning.
161
IMT, vol. VIII, pp. 324-329.
162
Wydawnictwo Centralnej �ydowskiej Komisji Historycznej (ed.), Dokumenty i Materia�y,
op. cit. (note 40), pp. 182-190.
163
Ibid., p. 186.
164
A. Donat, op. cit. (note 4), p. 232. Donat states that this text is based upon an English translation,
by one Howard Roiter, of an eyewitness report given by Rajzman in the Yiddish language
and recorded on tape (p. 251).