TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

80 Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf: Treblinka
The report ends with six “conclusions,” of which the most important is the
first:
“On the basis of the preliminary facts, the cremation of people has been
determined beyond a doubt. The extent of the extermination of human beings
was monstrous: about three million.”
On September 11, a “Report of the front-line press TASS” was issued, bearing
the title “The Death Camp in Tremblinka” (sic). We reproduce the most
significant excerpts: 198
“Tremblinka! At this word people tremble and look fearfully sideways.
People who lived in the vicinity of Tremblinka could not sleep at night: the
screams of the men, women, and children whom they were murdering
ripped through the darkness. The stench penetrated from there. They were
burning people there. […]
Tremblinka – that is the same as Majdanek. It is one of the numerous
factories of death, with which the Germans thickly covered Polish soil.
The ‘Tod-Lager’, [199] as the Germans themselves officially called it, [200]
was established close to Tremblinka sometime in June 1942. […] By the
beginning of July, the first transport arrived, filled to bursting with people
– with ‘living raw material,’ as the doomed were officially called. The
camp gate opened to the sound of a lively march, and the stream of living
people poured inside. From this point on, this stream was uninterrupted for
two years. The voracious gate consumed up to two thousand people daily.
[… 201 ] A fat Unterscharführer sent the human chain into the ‘bath.’ This
was a low square room without windows, with a heavy entrance door. A
large hose, through which gas was carried, led into the ‘bath.’ The people
were forcibly pushed into the ‘bath,’ the door was tightly closed with a
steel bar, the Unterscharführer gave a signal, and the ‘bath-master’
switched on the machinery of death.
In the beginning, the ‘bath’ had three compartments and could hold
1,200 people. The Germans, however, were not satisfied with this capacity,
and they quickly constructed a new building three times as large. Here
there were 8 chambers, and the bath could accommodate 4,800 people at a
time.
The people in the ‘bath’ died under horrible tortures after ten minutes.
The ‘bath-master’ recorded this by means of a small glass window in the
door. Here, every minute was costly – after all, thousands of other people
were waiting their turn. For this reason, the ‘bath’ functioned with Ger-
198 GARF, 7021-115-8, pp. 217-221.
199 In the German language.
200 Even if this had been so, the Germans would have called it “Todeslager,” as “Tod-Lager” is
a construction which would never be used by a German speaker.
201 In the manuscript “up to 7,000 people” originally appeared, but this was corrected by hand.