Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history,talk.politics.misc Subject: LEST WE FORGET: Treblinka's "tunnel" - passage to death.. Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Demaniuk,Eberl,Hingst,Nikolai,Treblinka As a standard "feature" of the death camps, a camoflaged barbed wire "tunnel" was used to funnel new victims into the gas chambers. At Treblinka, the German and Ukrainian troops would beat the victims with pipes and sticks to keep them moving.... One Treblinka survivor, who wrote of his experiences in 1944 (See the reference and the bottom of this article), described the process: "To avoid the blows, the victims ran as fast as they could to the gas chambers, the stronger pushing aside the weak. At the entrance to the gas chambers stood ... Ivan Demaniuk and Nikolai, one armed with an iron bar and the other with a sword, and they, too, urged the people on with blows to push their way in -- 200-250 in a chamber of 16 square meters. When the gas chambers were full, the Unkrainians closed the doors and started the engine. Twenty to twenty-five minutes later, an SS man or one of the Ukrainians would peep into the chambers through a window in the door. When they thought everyone had suffocated, they orderd the Jewish prisoners to open the rear doors and remove the bodies. When the doors were opened, all the corpses were standing; because of the crowding and the way the victims grasped one another, they were like a single clock of flesh." <1> "To drown out the victims' screams on their way to the gas chambers -- so that they would not be heard throughout the camp -- the SS arranged an orchestra." "During the first five weeks of the killing operation in Treblinka, between July 23 and August 28, about 245,000 Jews were deported there from the Warsaw ghetto and Warsaw district; from Radom district, 51,000; from Lublin district, 16,500, bringing the total in this period to about 312,500." <2> [Editor's note: Treblinka deportation figures are available upon request - contact kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca] "SS Unterscharfuhrer August Hingst, who served at that time in Treblinka, testified that 'Dr. Eberl's ambition was to reach the highest possible numbers and exceed all the other camps. So many transports arrived that the disembarkation and gassing of the people could no longer be handled (nicht mehr bewaltigt werden konnte). <3> From the technical and organizational standpoint, the camp was simply unable to absorb such a large number of victims. The three gas chambers, with their frequent technical breakdowns, were the main bottleneck, and the surplus from each transport had to be shot in the reception area. Many prisoners and more pits were required for burying the thousands of people who were shot, in addition to those thousands who died inside the densely packed freight cars on their way to the camp. The problem of digging more burial pits was partially solved by a scoop-shovel that was brought ... But since new transports arrived several times daily, still more and more corpses were left unburied. Dr. Eberl ... was incapable of maintaining control over the situation. With transports coming in all the time and both corpses and clothing piling up ... transports would have to be delayed at way stations. The result was a higher death toll in the freight cars themselves -- with all its ramifications once the transport reached the camp.." <3> <1> Jacob Wiernik, "A Yor in Treblinke" (A Year in Treblinka), New York, 1944, pp.20-21 <2> Tatiana Berenstein, B.Z.I.H., Warsaw, 1957, No. 21 B.Z.I.H., 1952, No. 1(3); B.Z.I.H., 1955, No. 15-16. <3>------------------------------------------------------------- BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7 ---------------------------------------------------------------- === The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, Canada === For an extensive bibliography dealing with the Holocaust, and containing over 1100 citations, contact kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca - it will be sent to you by return email. Additions to this bibliography are actively solicited.