The Interrogation The Soviet Protocols
EXCERPT
February 20, 1945. I, Lieutenant EPPEL', Investigator of the Fourth
Department of the "SMERSH" Directorate of Counterintelligence of the
Second Belorussian Front interrogated as defendant -
LELEKO, Pavel Vladimirovich, born in 1922, native of the village
of Chaplinka, Chaplinka District, Nikolayev Region, Ukrainian,
citizen of the USSR.
The interrogation began at 10.10 a.m.
The "death camp" was located on an area of about 7-8 hectares, which
was fenced in by two rows of barbed wire reaching 3 (three) meters in
height. Beyond the barbed wire stretched a continuous line of metallic
anti-tank obstacles enmeshed in barbed wire. The entire area of the
camp, in the shape of an irregular quadrangle, was divided into three
sections by rows of barbed wire. The barbed wire was interwined with
bushes and branches in order to prevent the possibility of seeing from
one section into the other.
After the barrack had been camouflaged into a railroad station, the
people brought to the death camp did not suspect the horrors closing
in on them.
Two more barracks stood about 70-100 meters from the above mentioned
two barracks situated by the railroad branch and serving as storage
space for belongings and clothing of the doomed prisoners. One of
these two barracks served as an undressing place for the women. The
men were undressed near the other barrack, right there on the street,
winter and summer. The food, belonging and clothing taken from the
doomed prisoners were stored inside this second barrack. Inside the
women's undressing room there was also a so-called "cashier's office"
where the women were ordered to hand over their money, jewelry, and
valuable for "safekeeping". Beyond the "cashier's office" booth was a
fenced in area where the hair of the women was cut. Men handed over
their valuables and money also in a special "cashier's office"
situated not far from the second barrack. Both barracks were fenced in
by barbed wire.
A road led from the undressing rooms the third section of the "death
camp" and terminated at the building where the extermination of people
took place.
Flowers grew right by in long boxes. There was no door at the
entrance. Instead of it there was a heavy hanging made from a rug.
Beyond it started a narrow passage which ended at the opposite wall.
To the right and to the left of the passage there were five doors that
closed hermetically and led into the special chambers where the
poisoning took place. The chambers were about six meters long and as
wide, about two to five-three meters high.. In the center of the
celing there was an electric light bulb in which there was no wiring
and there were two "shower" heads through which poisonous gas was fed
into the chamber.
The walls, floor and ceiling of the chamber were of cement. On the
opposite side to the entrance door there was another, likewise
hermetically closing door, through which the bodies of the poisoned
people were removed. As many as 500 men, women and children were
pushed into the chambers indiscriminately. Eight chambers out of the
ten existing in the gas chamber building were used to poison people.
In the two remaining ones, there were two powerful German engines,
about 1.5 meters high - two engines in all. Each engine fed gas to
four gas chambers. Some 20 meters from the above mentioned gas chamber
building stood the building of the old gas chambers, which contained
only three gas chambers. This building functioned until 1943. But as
it was unable to handle the enormous number of people brought by the
Germans to the "death camp", the new, large gas chamber building that
I have described above was built.
After it came into use, the old one
was no longer utilized. An incinerator from the burning of bodies was
situated about 10 meters beyond the large gas chamber building. It had
the shape of a cement pit about one meter deep and 20 meters long. A
series of furnaces covered on the top with four rows of rails extended
along the entire length of one of the walls of the pit. The bodies
were laid on the rails, caught fire from the flames burning in the
furnaces and burned. About 1000 bodies were burned simultaneously. The
burning process lasted up to five hours. Not far from the gas chamber
building, also in the third section, there was a barrack housing the
working crew composed of doomed prisoners and which comprised up to
500 persons.
The testimony has been written down from my words correctly, has been
read by me - LELEKO
Interrogation made by: INVESTIGATOR OF THE "SMERSH" DIRECTORATE OF
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OF THE SECOND BELORRUSIAN FRONT - Lieutenant
/EPPEL'/
The Excerpt is true: FIRST DEPUTY PROCURATOR OF THE CRIMEAN REGION,
Senior Councillor of Justice /KUPTSOV/
"31" January 1978
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
[
Index |
Treblinka
]
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.
of
Pavel Vladimirovich Leleko
From Interrogration of Defendant