Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Treblinka - The Killing Begins Summary: Descriptions of the early activity at the Aktion Reinhard death camp Treblinka Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Berger,Treblinka Archive/File: camps/aktion.reinhard/treblinka treblinka.new Last-modified: 1993/03/07 23 JULY 1942 "The first transport of 'deportees' left Malkinia on July 23, 1942, in the morning hours. ...It was loaded with Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. ... The train was made up of sixty closed cars, crowded with people. The car doors were locked from the outside and the air apertures barred with barbed wire. ...It was hot, and most of the people in the freight cars were in a faint." <1> The killing was about to begin.... "During this early period, before mid-August, 5,000 to 7,000 Jews arrived in Treblinka every day. Then the situation changed, the pace of transports increased, and there were days when 10,000 to 12,000 deportees arrived, including thousands who had died en route and others in a state of exhaustion. This state of affairs disrupted the "quiet welcome" designed to deceive the deportees into believing they had arrived at a transit station and that before continuing their journey to a labour camp they must be disinfected. Blows and shooting were needed to force those still alive but exhausted to descend from the freight cars and proceed to the square and the undressing barracks. Abrahman Goldfarb, who arrived at the camp on August 25th., relates: When we reached Treblinka and the Germans opened the freight-car doors, the scene was ghastly. The cars were full of corpses. The bodies had been partially consumed by chlorine. The stench from the cars caused those still alive to choke. The Germans ordered everyone to disembark from the cars; those who could were half-dead. SS and Ukrainians waiting nearby beat us and shot at us ... <2> "Oskar Berger, who was brought to Treblinka on August 22, describes the scene: As we disembarked we witnessed a horrible sight: hundreds of bodies lying all around. Piles of bundles, clothes, valises, everything mixed together. SS soldiers, Germans, and Ukrainians were standing on the roofs of barracks and firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Men, women, and children fell bleeding. The air was filled with screaming and weeping. Those not wounded by the shooting were forced through an open gate, jumping over the dead and wounded, to a square fenced with barbed wire." <3> <1> Franziszek Zabecki, "Wspomnienia dawne i nowe" Warszawa, 1977, pp. 39-40 <2> A. Goldfarb testimony, Yad Vashem Archives 0-3/1846, pp. 12-13 <3> Eugen Kogon, "Der SS-Staat" Bonn, 1974, p. 218 Excerpted from....---------------------------------------------- BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.