TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter III: Investigations, Camp Plans, Statistics 93
bombing the camp. In the first place there was nothing left to destroy, and in
the second, the craters produced by the bombs would have revealed the traces
of the alleged mass murders. An aerial photograph of the camp Treblinka II
taken in November 1944 further reveals that the camp at that time – after the
area was taken by the Red Army – had not yet been bombed. 219
Thus, the bombardment must have been the work of the Soviets. But the
Treblinka camp had already been liquidated in November 1943, and there
were no military targets in its immediate vicinity. Treblinka I, which was still
in operation in May 1944, was not bombed. Why, therefore, did the Soviets
drop bombs on Treblinka II? Perhaps in order to obliterate the many traces left
behind by the SS, traces which could in no way be made to jibe with the thesis
of mass extermination, and to lay false tracks that seemed to confirm this thesis?
228
As far as the shape and size of the camp is concerned, one may regard the
plans of the camp mentioned above as reliable, since they were drawn by a
professional surveyor on the basis of measurements done at the site, and because
they correspond well to the aerial photographs. One can therefore accept
them as a standard for comparison for all plans drawn earlier or later by exprisoners
of the camp or based upon their descriptions. With one exception,
which will be discussed later, the camp continually shows the shape of an irregular
quadrilateral.
On the other hand, with regard to the buildings in the camp and other facilities
we are dependent entirely upon the statements of the witnesses, since
not a single German camp plan has been preserved. The differences between
the plans produced by former inmates are less revealing than the graphical development
of the so-called ‘Camp II’, thus of the alleged extermination camp.
On the plan, which was included with the report of November 15, 1942, 229
the entire camp is dominated by the two extermination facilities, as if the
‘Camp I’, the administrative sector with quarters, kitchens, storehouses etc.,
did not exist at all. The two steam execution installations with three or, respectively,
ten chambers, which were then transformed into engine exhaust gas
execution facilities by J. Wiernik on the map published in his writings of
1944, 230 appear in all later plans with the same shape and in the same location.
231 Thus, in the beginning, ‘Camp I’ was not depicted at all, and ‘Camp II’
consisted exclusively of the two death houses.
The first official plan of Treblinka was produced by the Soviet investigative
commission on September 24, 1944. It has the shape of an irregular quadrilateral,
which corresponds to the actual form of the camp only in rough fea-
228
The body parts found on the camp grounds by the Poles are rationally explainable only by
bomb explosions.
229
See Document 2 in the Appendix.
230
Cf. Chapter II, Section 5.
231
See Document 4 in the Appendix.