He lives by the motto “Never Forget.”

Glucksman spent time at the Gross Rosen and Dachau “death camps.”

He claims he “witnessed” people being “murdered in homicidal gas chambers disguised as showers.”

Sidney says the crematoriums ran all day and night non-stop, filling the air with the smell of burning flesh.

He claims that the evil Germans would put babies in bags and bash them to death against concrete walls.

He can still hear the babies crying sometimes.

Sidney assures us “he saw this with his own eyes.”

Glucksman now lives in Connecticut and travels around traumatizing young children with his tales of horror, reminding them to never forget, and that the Germans were “monsters.”

The children sit in stunned silence as Sidney tells his tale.

As Sidney says, “whenever a school or university calls, I drop everything at my business and leave just to tell the story that other generations should never forget.”

Survivor tells of Holocaust horrors

Abbe Smith, New Haven Register, Conn.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
March 26, 2009

Mar. 26–WEST HAVEN — At the age most kids enter high school, Polish-born Sidney Glucksman instead witnessed unspeakable atrocities from within the walls of a Nazi death camp.

One of the few Holocaust survivors left to tell firsthand the story of the extermination of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II, Glucksman lives by the mantra: “Never forget.”

At Notre Dame High School Wednesday, Glucksman shared horrific tales of watching women and children marched off to gas chambers, never to be seen again, and babies stuffed in bags and brutally murdered.

He survived typhoid, near starvation and brushes with death in two concentration camps.

While Notre Dame High School can’t give Glucksman back his teenage years, on Wednesday, they gave him a symbol of the years he lost.

“If we could only have been at that school door to take you with us and save you, we would have,” said Notre Dame President Brother James Branigan. “You are a brother to us and I want to honor you with a diploma from our high school.”

And a little something extra from his friend, New Haven police Lt. Leo Bombalicki, a Notre Dame alumnus.

“Sidney never had a chance to go to high school, so I think he should have a varsity jacket from Notre Dame High School,” Bombalicki said.

Glucksman beamed as he took the jacket and tried it on. “That’s really worth more than a hundred million dollars. Thank you so much,” he said.

The entire Notre Dame student body rose for a standing ovation and rolling applause.

The presentation of the diploma and varsity jacket were a surprise.

When he was invited to speak at Notre Dame, Glucksman did not hesitate before answering “yes.”

“Whenever a school or university calls, I drop everything at my business and leave just to tell the story that other generations should never forget about,” he said.

That story, for Glucksman, is a very personal one.

At 12 years old, Glucksman was a student at a school in Chrzanow, Poland, when Nazi soldiers invaded his school and rounded up the Jewish children. The year was 1940. The students were loaded onto trucks and taken away.

“They told us we would be back with our parents in the evening. That evening never came,” he said.

The children slept outside and ate soup that consisted of slivers of potato floating in warm water.

He and the others were taken to Gross Rosen concentration camp where he was forced into labor and later transferred to Dachau concentration camp.

A young Glucksman watched as trains rolled in with box cars full of women and children packed tight as sardines.

“If you had to go to the bathroom, you did it standing up. If people died, they died standing up,” he said.

He described for the students what he considers the worst scene he has witnessed in his lifetime. Nazi soldiers shaved the heads of women and children and told them they were going to take a shower. They were led to a gray building with two large doors. Brushes and soap sat on a shelf.

“We were waiting 15 minutes and they never came out. That’s when we knew that was the first batch of the dead gassed people,” he recalled.

The crematorium went day and night without interruption. Smoke came out of it all the time and the camp stunk of burning human bones and flesh.

Glucksman saw babies stuffed into bags and soldiers swinging the bags against concrete walls, killing the babies.

“They were crying. Many times, I still hear them cry,” he said.

The gymnasium was silent at Glucksman told his story.

“Just monsters could do something I saw with my own eyes,” he said.

Despite the horrific images etched into Glucksman’s memory, he managed to make a happy life with wife, Libby, who he met after being liberated from Dachau in 1945.

Four years later, he and Libby moved to New Haven where Glucksman opened Sidney’s Tailoring & Cleaning on Chapel Street in New Haven. The couple raised two daughters.

Then in 2000, Glucksman helped the United States testify against one of his former prison guards Theodor Szehinskyj, a retired machinist in Philadelphia, who the U.S. Department of Justice said worked as a former SS guard at the Gross Rosen concentration camp.

Now Glucksman is recording his life history in a documentary called “Threads” by James Campbell.

As the last generation of Holocaust survivors begins to fade, Glucksman wants to ensure his story and the stories of millions of Jews who lived through or died during history’s worst genocide are remembered forever.

“You just never forget. I’d like to say to all the children, all the people, they should never forget. There are less and less of us alive,” he said.

Notre Dame history teacher Richard Antonetti is doing his part to keep the story alive. Antonetti teaches a Holocaust class that as many as 150 students take each year.

“We have to remember because what’s happening today in parts of the world — Darfur, Rwanda, Cambodia — the events that took place are forgotten unless we read and learn about them,” he said.

—–

To see more of New Haven Register, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.nhregister.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, New Haven Register, Conn.

http://www.cjp.org/page.aspx?id=197307

Sidney now has his “documentary” about his tale out, called “Threads” [1]

Related:
- Dachau – The fraudulent stories of “extermination” and “homicidal gas chambers”
- More Holocast™ Stories

Part 2
Part 3

Friedrich Paul Berg was born in 1943, the son of German immigrants. He was educated in the United States and holds a degree in Mining Engineering from Columbia University. His professional engineering work has been primarily as a mechanical engineer.

Quote:

“The Holocaust story relies on generally accepted –but totally false– misperceptions about the toxicity of diesel exhaust. Although diesel exhaust does indeed smell terrible at times and may even look terrible, the appearance and smell have nothing whatever to do with the presence or absence of any toxic ingredient. The all important toxic ingredient is carbon monoxide; at full load, diesel exhaust contains less than 0.4% carbon monoxide. These numbers are the worst cases and apply to every Diesel engine ever built regardless of the condition of the engines. From diesels, even the highest CO levels alone cannot possibly kill more than a small minority of an average group of people. Only in combination with the reduced oxygen levels, which occur only when the engines are under “heavy load,” can a combination of effects kill large percentages of people in half-an-hour. Any reasonable gassing arrangement would, however, have had to kill everyone. Gasoline engine exhaust, by contrast, easily contains 7% to 12% carbon monoxide and no oxygen at all. Even far more deadly, producer gas contains up to 35% carbon monoxide and no oxygen at all. More than 500,000 producer gas-driven vehicles were used throughout German-occupied Europe during WW2, any one of which would have been thousands of times more effective than any diesel arrangement. But, neither gasoline engines nor producer gas generators have ever been implicated in any of the Holocaust claims — only diesels. How absurd and how inefficient those Nazis must have been!” [1]

Website of Friedrich Berg:
http://www.nazigassings.com/

Friedrich Paul Berg Article Archive

From the research I’ve done, diesel engines generally do not produce a lethal amount of carbon monoxide gas. The exhaust from gasoline engines, on the other hand, is quite lethal and contains much more carbon monoxide. Furthermore, the Germans used gasoline, not diesel, engines in all of their tanks and vehicles during the war. So assuming for the sake of argument that the Germans were actually conducting homicidal gassings, they surely would have used exhaust from gasoline engines. But hey, that’s the way everything is with the holohoax story. The Germans, paragons of efficiency and engineering, always seem to have chosen the most inefficient (and downright impossible) methods for their “masterplan of genocide.”

Yad Vashem‘s summary on Treblinka mentions the Diesel of Death:

Treblinka

Extermination Camp, in the northeastern part of the Generalgouvernement. Located 2.5 miles from the train station of Malkinia on the main line running from Warsaw to Bialystok. Treblinka was established in early summer 1942 as part of Aktion Reinhard – the Nazis’ plan to exterminate the Jews in the Generalgouvernement area. In total, approximately 870,000 people were murdered at Treblinka.

The first transports reached Treblinka on July 23, 1942; including Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto. From that day until September 21, 1942, approximately 254,000 Jews from Warsaw and 112,000 Jews from other places in the Warsaw district were murdered at Treblinka. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Radom and Lublin districts of the Generalgouvernement were also executed there. In all, approximately 738,000 Jews from the Generalgouvernement perished at Treblinka, as well as 107,000 Jews from the Bialystok district. Thousands of Jews from outside Poland were also brought to Treblinka; these included Jews from Slovakia, Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and some who had previously been interned at Theresienstadt. Altogether 29,000 Jews from outside Poland were murdered at Treblinka, as were 2,000 Gypsies. The mass extermination program was in operation at Treblinka until April 1943, after which only a handful of transports arrived.

From August 1942, Treblinka was run by camp commandant SS-Obersturmfuehrer Franz Stangl, who had previously served as commander of the Sobibor extermination camp. Stangl’s deputy was Kurt Franz. They were assisted by 20-30 SS Officers (who had participated in the Euthanasia Program), and 90-120 Ukrainian soldiers working as camp guards.

Treblinka was situated in a sparsely populated area that was heavily wooded – this site was chosen in order to conceal the atrocities taking place there. Treblinka contained living, reception, and extermination areas. The extermination area included a brick building that housed three gas chambers. A diesel engine was housed in an adjoining shed – this engine produced the carbon monoxide, which fueled the chambers. The gas flowed through pipes attached to the ceiling of the chambers, ending in what looked like showerheads. The Nazis arranged the gas chamber in this way in order to create the impression that the Jews were merely entering the building to take showers – not to be murdered. A hallway in the building led to each of the three gas chambers, and in each chamber was another door through which the corpses were removed. About 200 yards away lay the huge trenches where the corpses were buried.

The extermination process at Treblinka was based on experience gained by the Nazis in Belzec and Sobibor- the two other Aktion Reinhard camps. When a train made up of 50 – 60 cars, holding some 6,000 – 7,000 people, arrived at the nearby train station, 20 cars were brought into the camp, while the rest were made to wait in the station. The car doors were opened, and SS officers ordered the Jews to disembark. Next, a camp officer would announce to the new arrivals that they had reached a transit camp where they would take showers, have their clothes disinfected, and then travel on to various labor camps. After this announcement, the Jews were taken to “Deportation Square.” Men and women were separated – children going with the women. The women and children were made to undress in a barrack, and the women’s hair was cut. Naked, they were forced to leave the barrack and enter the “pipe”- a narrow, fenced-in, camouflaged path that led to the gas chambers. After the victims were locked into the chambers, the engine was started and poison gas poured in. Within half an hour, all inside were dead, and the next group of victims would prepare to enter. Meanwhile, the bodies were removed and taken for burial in the trenches. This last job was done by a team of Jewish prisoners, called Sonderkommando.

These prisoners were not immediately executed upon arrival at the camp – rather, they were selected carry out tasks such as cleaning the train cars, preparing the victims for their execution, dealing with the possessions and clothing of the victims and handling the dead. In the spring of 1943, the Nazis used the Sonderkommando to cremate the bodies. Most of these Jews were exterminated themselves after a few days or weeks of work, with newer arrivals taking their places.

After a while, the Nazis decided that the extermination process at Treblinka was not efficient enough. Thus, between August and October 1942 10 new gas chambers were constructed there. Furthermore, the Germans added another improvement to their extermination system – those new arrivals who were too weak to walk to the gas chambers unaided were told that they were being sent to the infirmary. They were taken to a closed-in area with a Red Cross flag adorning it; inside were SS officers and Ukrainian guards who murdered them on the spot.

Aktion 1005 – the campaign to destroy all evidence of the Nazis’ murderous activities – was launched at Treblinka in March 1943, and lasted until July. After this operation was completed, Treblinka was shut down. Most of the camp structures were destroyed, the ground was plowed and planted over, and the site was turned into a farm that was given to a Ukrainian family.

Hundreds of Jews tried to escape the trains on their way to the camp, but most failed in their attempts. Others attempted to escape the camp itself, but almost all were caught and hanged. Jews from several transports offered resistance in which German and Ukrainian guards were wounded or killed. An uprising was planned when the prisoners found out that the Germans were planning to liquidate the camp, however, the uprising was suppressed and most of the 750 prisoners who tried to escape were caught.

After the war, many of the SS officers who worked at Treblinka were put on trial. Both commandant Franz Stangl and deputy commandant Kurt Franz were sentenced to life imprisonment.

IHR on the improbability of using Diesel engine gas for “exterminations”:

Diesel Gassing

In recent years, the most widely-circulated story has been that Jews were gassed at Treblinka with carbon monoxide from the exhaust of a diesel engine. (note 22)

However, as American engineer Friedrich Berg has established, this story is improbable for technical reasons. (note 23) In spite of the obnoxious odor of diesel exhaust, diesel engines produce much smaller quantities of toxic carbon monoxide than ordinary gasoline motors. (note 24) It would thus be difficult efficiently to gas large numbers of people using diesel exhaust. A normal gasoline engine would be much more logical. (note 25)

It is important to keep in mind that the “evidence” now usually cited for diesel gassing at Treblinka is no more credible than the evidence that was once presented for steaming and suffocating. Apparently the steaming and suffocating stories have been dropped for the sake of credible consistency.

Solid evidence for gassings at Treblinka has proven to be very elusive. For example, it turned out that none of the witnesses in the 1951 West German “Treblinka” court case ever actually saw anyone being gassed. “The type of gas used to kill the people there [Treblinka] cannot be determined with certainty because none of the witnesses was able to witness this procedure,” the judges declared in their verdict. (note 26)

At least some former Treblinka prisoners testified in postwar West German trials that they not only never saw a gas chamber, but did not even hear about gassings from others. (note 27)

Holocaust historians today are not able to agree about the number of homicidal “gas chambers” at Treblinka. Raul Hilberg maintains that there were three at first, but because they were allegedly not adequate for the job, more were built later on. There were eventually six or perhaps ten chambers, he reports. (note 28) Others have reported the existence of 13 gas chambers at Treblinka. (note 29)

Vasily Grossman with the Red Army in Schwerin, Germany (1945) [1]

Jewish author Vasily Grossman wrote fiction novels in Soviet Russia prior to the war, keening the imaginative faculties of his mind. During WWII he was a “reporter” for the Soviet Army. His article “The Hell of Treblinka” (1944) was disseminated at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal as evidence for the prosecution. Grossman was considered a “war hero” by the Soviets for his writings. [1]

Among other things, Vasily claims “3 million” people were exterminated in the “death factory” of Treblinka over the course of 13 months, “engine gas” and “steam chambers” were used as a means of extermination, that giant machines were used to excavate large pits at Treblinka for the disposal of the bodies, and that Himmler visited Treblinka in 1943 and ordered that the bodies in the pits be dug up and burned to destroy the evidence of extermination.

So “several million” corpses were dug up from the giant pits and burned on specially designed giant outdoor ovens. There were 3 ovens, each over 250 yards long that could burn around 4000 bodies at a time. Vasily claims “eyewitnesses” reported that the flames leaping off the giant hibachis reached 25-30 feet into the air, and that the flames could be seen “30 to 40 miles” from the camp. Then the ashes were disposed by spreading in fields and roads.

Also included in Vasily’s fable are the stories of sending jew hair to Germany to make ropes for submarines and to stuff mattresses, dead bodies “writhing” in the fires, the bellies of dead pregnant women bursting in the fires, and of “monstrous” Germans “leisurely entertaining” themselves by burning children.

What could have possibly inspired a tale of this sort? Perhaps Vasily toured the very real destruction and mass murder his jewish brothers and partners in crime, the Bolsheviks, had unleashed on the Russians, Ukranians, and others.

The article also describes an uprising by the prisoners in which a rag tag group of half-starved inmates with axes, knives, and batons defeated several hundred SS guards and the camp was burned down. Then the Germans – with the Red Army advancing towards Germany – supposedly devoted manpower to totally destroy the camp, blowing up the buildings, etc in order to cover up the evidence. Convenient cover story for the Soviets…don’t bother looking for the evidence to substantiate the claims of Vasily or the other “eyewitnesses.”

The article reads like war propaganda from tabloid writers. The Germans are sophomorically demonized as “monsters” and “sub-humans”, while Comrade Stalin and the “Holy Soviet Army” is fighting for freedom against the “Hellish Germans.”

Full article “The Hell of Treblinka” in French:
http://www.memoire-juive.org/treblinka.htm

Notable excerpts from the article (using Google translate):

The Hell of Treblinka

by Vasily Grossman, unabridged French version

The headings are not Vasily Grossman; they have been added for better navigation in the text.

[...]

Today the men spoke, stones and earth have borne witness. And we, in the eyes of humanity and to the conscience of the world, go one after the other circles of hell Treblinka, which pales to the hell of Dante. Everything you read, I have reconstructed from the stories of living witnesses, statements of men who worked at Treblinka since its inception until August 2, 1943, the day that death row inmates revolted, burned the camp and fled into the woods. The prisoners confirmed word for word the statements of witnesses and sometimes supplemented. All these men I saw with my own eyes I have talked at length, have before me their written statements. Such testimony, however, different sources, are perfectly aligned, whether Bari, head of the dog camp, or the technique of mass murder, the organization murder in the chain. Therefore we commit in the successive circles of Hell of Treblinka.

[...]

The women’s hair

In the women’s barracks, there was a “salon” where they are going to the mower, the old one removed their wigs. Strange psychological moment: the testimony of hairdressers, by being stripped of their hair, women were convinced they were going to the bath. Sometimes one of them stroking its head said: “Here a little shorter, please … Equalizing …Almost all came out reassured with a piece of soap and a towel, but young people regretted their beautiful tresses. Why do we cut their hair for women? Was it to deceive?… No, it was for use as raw material …I asked many people what the Germans did all the hair of those who would die. They said that huge pile of curls and braids black or golden blonde, were disinfected, pressed in bags and shipped to Germany. Eyewitnesses confirmed that the bags were in fact German addresses. But there, that was one of those hair? Nobody could answer me. A Kon, in his written statement, said they were in the Department of the Navy, they used to stuff mattresses, plaiting ropes for submarines, etc..

[...]

The gas chamber

Before them stood a handsome stone building with wooden ornaments and was thinking of an ancient temple. Concreted Five steps led to the low doors, but very large, massive and beautiful work. Flowers grew outside the entrance that large decorated vases. ‘But all around was chaos: they were everywhere from the mountains of freshly turned earth; his claws of steel, a great excavator projected grating in tons of yellow sand and dust was made as a curtain dimming the sun. The roar of the gigantic machine that all day digging huge graves mingled the furious barking of dozens of dogs-wolves.

[...]

Attempt to assess the number of victims

Each room of the new building was eight meters long and seven wide, that is to say fifty-six meters square area. Their total area was then five hundred yards square, counting seventy-five square meters of the three rooms at the beginning, Treblinka had an industrial area of death of six hundred thirty-five meters square. We piled in one room of four hundred to five hundred people. Therefore, when the ten rooms were operating at full, they annihilated at a time about four thousand five hundred people. On average, Chambers of Hell of Treblinka were filled two or three times a day (but sometimes up to five times). That is to say, it perished, that nothing in the new rooms, assuming what not were filled twice daily that is to say reducing the numbers, about ten thousand people per day three hundred thousand per month. For thirteen months, Treblinka worked all day. Even if we assume ninety days off for repairs or because there were no trains, there are still ten months. At the rate of three hundred thousand victims per month on average, we get for ten months, the appalling figure of three million, he confirms. our conjectures early: three million, we said, basing our calculations on the number – in fact deliberately reduced convoys arrived. I summarize:

Firstly, witnesses say, Treblinka worked every day in spite of their habits, the Germans were resting or Sunday or even on holidays such as Christmas, Easter or New Year.

Secondly, the number of cargo room – which had Treblinka most notorious of all the factories of death – was higher than we gave. It happened because we entassât in each seven hundred to eight hundred and even people. Usually they threw children and low over the heads of adults literally pressed against each other.

Third: I added that this happened twice a day when everything suggests that the average time was three. So even in greatly reducing all figures – whether convoys arriving at Treblinka or the number of killed per room – we get the fabulous figure, the monstrous figure of three million exterminated in thirteen month!

The death in gas chambers

The death occurred after ten to twenty minutes. The first time, when new rooms were “put into operation” and that the executioners, having not yet developed their system, were engaged in experiments to assay the Victims subjected to horrific suffering did not die until two or three hours. At first the crowds and suction equipment malfunctioning, death occurs after eight to ten hours of torment. Different methods were tested. The first was the repression of gas engine exhaust of a heavy tank towards the needs of the Treblinka station. The gas containing 2 to 3% carbon monoxide, which has the property to set the blood hemoglobin to give a durable combination.

[...]

There was a third method, less used, but used it anyway. It was to remove the air chambers through the steam. The principle does not change: it was to deprive the body of oxygen.

[...]

After twenty minutes

After twenty to twenty-five minutes, the acolytes of Schmidt threw a glance through the peephole. The time had come to open the doors that opened onto the quays. Detainees, in combination, closely followed by the SS, proceeded to “clean”. As the floor was bowing to the dock, many corpses rolled from there themselves. Those who worked in “clean” room told me that the faces of the dead were frankly yellow and 70% had blood on the mouth and nose. For physiologists to explain it. The SS, while chatting, examined the bodies. If someone was still alive, moaning or moving, we finished a shot. Then teams armed with dental forceps tore the dead their teeth with gold or platinum. These were sorted and shipped to Germany in crates. If it had been better or more convenient to pull teeth to live the SS would not hesitate to do so, but it was easier and simpler to operate on cadavers.

[...]

The great excavators worked ceaselessly, day and night digging pits new long several hundred meters, which we did not see the bottom. The pits were open, waiting, but not for long.

[...]

II

The minister of death

In the late winter of 1943, Himmler arrived by plane at Treblinka, along with a large following officials of the Gestapo. The group landed near the camp where he went on two cars through the main entrance. Most new arrivals were in uniform, but some may be experts, were civilians in coat and hat. Himmler inspected the camp, and one of those who have seen tells us that the minister’s death came a huge pit and gazed in silence, while those who accompanied him were held back at some distance from this monumental tomb already half full of corpses: Treblinka was the company’s largest Konzern Himmler. The Reichsführer SS said the plane that day, but after giving the command of the camp an order which perplexed and Hauptsturmführer Baron von Pfein, Korol and his deputy, and Captain Franz had to proceed without delay to the excavation of corpses, burning them all to the last, and spread the ashes in the fields and roads. There were already several million in land, the task was therefore more difficult. In addition, we would never bury the dead they had to burn.

But why travel Himmler’s orders and these categories? It’s simple: the Red Army had conquered Stalingrad. It was a terrible blow for the Germans, and for the first time Berlin began to consider the liabilities incurred, punishment, expiation. This explains the arrival at Treblinka Himmler himself and he gave the order to remove at the earliest traces of the crimes perpetrated at sixty kilometers from Warsaw. Yes, this was the result of the Russian victory in the Battle of the Volga.

The decision to build crematoria

Himmler said: “Incinerate all dead. “”

But the bodies burned badly (those women, it is true, were consumed more than others), and it took a lot of fuel and plenty of oil. The company was expensive. In sum, there was an impasse. But a specialist arrived from Germany, a burly SS that bordered the fifties. The Hitler regime has produced specialists! And of all kinds for the murder of small children, strangulation, for the construction of gas chambers and destruction, scientifically organized, large cities within a day. There was one also for the exhumation and burning fast millions of corpses.

He came to Treblinka and directed the construction of furnaces. Furnaces of a particular type, as neither the crematorium in Lublin, or any other, had been able to burn at a time so short that amount of body. An excavator dug a long pit of two hundred fifty three hundred yards, wide from twenty to twenty-five meters, five meters deep. Three rows of small equidistant columns of reinforced concrete, high hundred to one hundred twenty centimeters, were built at the bottom and served to support steel beams that are arranged along the length of the pit. On these girders, and transversely, was installed rails, Cinq-seven centimeters from each other. We thus had the gates of a giant cyclopean oven. A new narrow gauge line of graves led to the first oven, which he would soon added a second and a third of the same dimensions. Each could receive both of three thousand five hundred to four thousand corpses.

Thick columns of smoke

They sent a second “Bagger” – giant excavator – then another. We worked night and day. Those who were engaged for the incineration of corpses say that the ovens were thinking of amazing volcanoes, the heat they gave off a terrible burnt faces; they vomited flame reached eight to ten meters; columns of black smoke dense and oily, rose into the sky and displayed in a heavy curtain move. Thirty or forty miles around, the villagers saw the flames rising in the night above the fir forest surrounding the camp. The smell of burned flesh was everywhere. When the wind blew towards the Polish camp, located three kilometers away, the air was stifling. The incineration of corpses occupied eight hundred prisoners, many more than that of workers employed in the blast furnace or hearth of any large metallurgical plant. For eight months, this monstrous company worked night and day, but without arriving to remove all the bodies buried there. It is true that new quotas on death row still arriving. Hence, for furnaces, extra work.

The horror

They came from Bulgaria, and that SS sentry waited impatiently. For deceived by the Germans and the fascist Bulgarian government then, these people ignorant of the fate that awaited them, brought with them many objects of value, excellent food, white bread. They came from Grodno and Bialystok, Warsaw Ghetto, which had raised, he had also other points of Poland were soldiers, workers and peasants Polish insurgents. A contingent of gypsies came from Bessarabia: about two hundred and eight hundred men, women and children. They had made the journey on foot, followed by their trailers, they had been deceived, too, and that they were escorted by two guards who were unaware that these people were going to die. It is reported that the Bohemians clapped their hands in admiration at the beautiful building of gas chambers, without guessing until the last moment the fate that awaited them, and that greatly amused the Germans. The SS cruelly raged against the rebels of the Warsaw ghetto. They put aside women and children, they led not to the gas chambers, but where the burned corpses. They forced the mad mothers with horror to drive their children from the ovens where thousands of bodies writhing in the flames and smoke, where the corpses, such as living agitated and contracted, where the bellies of dead pregnant burst under the effect of heat where children killed before birth, burning in the gaping womb of their mothers. This vision that would withstand the punishment due to man’s most hardened would have a hundred times more terrible about these women who tried to cover their hands in front of their terrified children, “Mommy, what’s that we’ll we do? Are we going to burn us? “They shouted, pressing against them … Dante in his Inferno, had seen anything so awful. After leisurely entertained by the spectacle, the Germans burned children.

Why write this?

One feels in reading all this a sense of unbearable horror. But the reader can believe me, writing is no less painful. You may say perhaps: “But yes what you require? Why portray these monstrous pictures? “”

Because even when it is terrible, the writer must tell the truth, and the reader must know it. Turn away, ignore, ignore, is an insult to the memory of those who perished. Who knows the truth, the whole truth will never be known with any enemy, what with our big monster, our Holy Red Army had started a fight to death.

Hymn of Treblinka

The “hospital”, too, was refurbished. The first time they brought the sick in space delimited by the branches. After being greeted by a fake “doctor”, they were killed and their bodies placed on stretchers were taken to the grave. Then they dug a large circular pit. All around, the seats were arranged very low, but so close to the board that there was one sitting on top of the pit where the bodies burning. It led to the “hospital” sick and decrepit old men, the “nurses” made them sit on seats when they saw the bodies writhing in the fire, then these sadistic fired at close range in the necks and gray arched backs, and poor body swooped down in flames.

We knew all the weight of German humor, which we never had a very high opinion. But how could we have imagined what was in Treblinka humor, entertainment, jokes SS?
They organized football matches between those sentenced to death, they forced them to play hide and seek, they organized choirs and dances which these unfortunates were to take part. Near German barracks, there was a menagerie of beasts relatively harmless, wolves and foxes, were locked in cages, while the wild beasts the most hideous and dangerous that the world has ever brought to and fro in freedom, and listening to music sitting on benches birch. A hymn called Treblinka had been made for death row:

Für uns heute nur giebt Treblinka
Das ist unser Schicksal
(Nothing that Treblinka
It is our destiny. )

They forced the men to bloody repeat chorus a few minutes before their death, silly songs, sentimental

… Ich brach das Blümelein
schenkt und es dem schönsten
Geliebten Madlein …
(I picked the little flower
And I offered my beautiful … )

One day the commander had withdrawn a batch of new arrivals a few children whose parents were killed, he ordered them to dress in nice clothes, feed them sweets, and he played with them. But this fad passed him after a few days, after which he was killed.

One of the main entertainment of the SS, was to suffer the worst violence to women young and pretty as we begin to share each new arrival and that their torturers themselves pushing the next morning, the gas chamber. So fun to Treblinka those support the Hitler regime, the pride of Nazi Germany.

[...]

The deportees who worked at the incineration

Summer 1943 was exceptionally warm. Not a drop of rain, not a cloud, not a breath of wind for weeks. The incineration of corpses continued; six months already since the furnaces were operating day and night, but only just over half the dead were burned.
Inmates who worked in the incineration of corpses could not long resist the horrible moral and physical torments they endured, were recorded from fifteen to twenty suicides per day, and many were killed in deliberate breaching disciplinary rules.
“Receiving a ball was a luxury,” said Kossow a guy who escaped from the camp. And they told me that being sentenced to life in Treblinka was a thousand times more horrible than to die.

Ash

It carried the ashes out of the enclosure. Villagers Wolke, mobilized by the Germans loaded them into cars and spreaders on the road, along the side of death, led to the disciplinary camp of Polish, and extended the children held regularly on this road using shovels. They were sometimes of gold coins, gold teeth melted. ‘Children of the dark road, “they said in speaking of them. Indeed, it was black and ash like a ribbon of mourning. The wheel of cars there was a sound ‘very special, and when I followed, I thought I ever heard a rustle plaintive and deaf as a timid moan.
This black ribbon, through woods and fields, was the death camp in the Polish camp, was a symbol of the terrible fate that united the people under the ax of Hitler’s Germany.

The peasants carried the ash from spring 1943 to summer 1944. Every day, twenty cars were going to work and each carried six or eight times a load of one hundred twenty-five to one hundred and thirty pounds.

[...]

The end of Treblinka

Treblinka had ceased to exist. The Germans incinérèrent the corpses still remained, demolished buildings of brick, removed the barbed wire, burned what remained of the wooden huts. They blew up or carried facilities, did disappear ovens, retired excavators, filled the innumerable ditches. Nothing remained of the station building. Finally they dismantled the track, removed the tie. They sowed the lupine on the location of the camp, and some Streben it built a small house. Today it is more: it was also burned.

What was the purpose of the Germans? Hide the footsteps of millions of murders in the hell of Treblinka? But they thought it was really possible? They hoped to close the mouth for thousands of witnesses who saw the doomed trains, from all parts of Europe, moving towards the factory of death? Obscure the macabre heavy flame, smoke during eight months climbed into the sky and saw that night and day the residents of dozens of towns and villages? Remove thirteen months of horrible cries pushed by women and children, and that farmers have Wolke still hear? To silence the peasants for a year were transported human ashes from the camp on nearby roads? Forcing to silence those who have seen and which provide precise and consistent evidence on each SS, each sentry, who can not rebuild step, hour by hour, the newspaper of Treblinka? To them no one will cry over “Mützen ab! “Nobody crammed into gas chambers. Himmler has more power over his followers who, head down and pulling their fingers trembling on the edge of their jackets, trace a voice dull and monotonous history of their crimes they believe caused by the folly or delirium. A Soviet officer who carries the green ribbon of the Medal of Stalingrad records the confession of the assassins. The tight-lipped guard who stands at the door, too, the Medal of Stalingrad, his thin face, tanned by the winds, is serious and severe. This is the very face of the people’s justice. The symbol is not striking? It is a victorious army at Stalingrad who came to Treblinka, near Warsaw. If Heinrich Himmler was moved in February 1943, he came by plane to Treblinka, he gave orders to build kilns to burn the corpses, to remove the traces, it was not without reason. But it was fruitless. Defenders of Stalingrad arrived at Treblinka: the road from the Volga to the Vistula was short. Today, the soil of Treblinka refuses to be complicit in the crimes perpetrated by these monsters: he vomits bones, objects that belonged to the dead and that Hitler had wanted to hide.

Treblinka, September 1944

We arrived at the Treblinka camp in early September, thirteen months after the uprising. The death factory operated thirteen months and thirteen months the Germans have been working to erase the traces.

Everything is quiet. Just when one hears the rustle of pine summit, along the railway. These pines, sand, the old stock, millions of eyes have looked at cars that were advancing slowly toward the dock. Means crunching softly ash, slag powder on the dark road, lined with carefully, like German, stones painted white. We enter the camp, we tread the soil of Treblinka. The lupine pods crack as they are touched with a slight tingling and millions of seeds are spread on the ground. The noise they are falling and the pods are opening that are based in a sad, sweet melody, as if we came from the depths of the earth – far, wide and melancholy – the death knell of small bells. The land undulates beneath the feet, soft and greasy as if it had been sprinkled with flaxseed oil – earth bottomless Treblinka, surging like a sea That wilderness surrounded with barbed wire has engulfed more human lives than all oceans and seas all over the globe since the human race exists.

Land rejects bone fragments, teeth, various articles and papers. She will not be complicit.

Things escape from the ground splits, its wounds still gaping shirts half consumed, panties, shoes, cigar-greenish, wheels of watches, pocket knives, shaving brushes, candles, slippers for children Red pompoms, serviettes of Ukraine, lace, scissors, thimbles, corsets, bandages. Further heaps utensils: drums, aluminum cups, pots, pans, pots, jars, cans, canteens, cups child Ebonite … Still further, a hand appears to have derived from the land of bloated Soviet passports, half charred, and log books in Bulgarian, photographs of children from Warsaw and Vienna, childish letters, poems written on the yellow sheet of a book of hours, ration cards in Germany … And everywhere, perfume bottles, green, blue or pink … A horrible odor of decomposition prevails in these places, which nothing could overcome neither the heat nor sun, nor rain, nor snow, nor wind. And these things have become prey swarms of gnats.

We continue to move forward on this land where not sink when suddenly we stopped. Hair thick, wavy, copper-colored, fine hair girls trampled, then curls, braids heavy black on the white sand, and others more. The contents of a bag, one bag of hair, had spread there … So it was true! Hope, a wild hope, collapsed: it was not a dream! The pods of lupine continue to make clear, their seeds fall, and one would always hear rising from beneath the earth knell of an infinite number of small bells. It seems that the heart will stop beating, contracted by bitterness, pain, anguish too strong.

Racism, a mortal danger to mankind

Scientists, sociologists, criminologists, psychiatrists, philosophers ask how this could happen. Should we seek the cause in some organic traits, heredity, education, environment, external conditions, a historical inevitability, the criminal intent of directors? Embryos of racism, which seemed so funny, presentations by teachers and charlatans indigent theorists steeple in Germany in the last century, the German philistine contempt for the Russian, Polish, Jewish, the French, the English, Greek, Czech, this overweening belief, all free of German superiority over other peoples, quietly mocked by comedians and publicists, all suddenly, within a few years, has deprived his features “childish” and grown into a mortal danger to humanity, life and freedom, all this has been a source of incredible suffering, has shed rivers of blood and increased the crime, certainly, there is food for thought!

Every citizen of the world meets the future

Wars like this are horrible. But it’s too little today about the responsibility of Germany. Let us be clear that all peoples, that each citizen of the world meets the future.

Today everyone is bound to his conscience, before his son and to his mother before his country and to humanity, to answer all his soul and his whole thought to the question: where does Racism? What does it take for the Nazis, Hitler never did reappear, or one side or the other of the ocean?

The imperial idea of “superiority” of national, racial, etc.., Has consistently led the Nazis to create camps of Majdanek, Sobibor, Bełżyce, Oswiencim, Treblinka.

Do not forget that this war the fascists will not lose the bitterness of defeat, but also the sensual memories of mass killings carried out easily.

That is what must be remembered, fiercely, day after day, those who hold dear the honor, freedom and life of all peoples, of all humanity.

Vasily Grossman

NOTES
(1) It was here the first attempts to calculate the number of victims of Treblinka. Today, an estimated more than 700,000 around the number of Jews exterminated in this camp. General Commission of Inquiry concluded that 731,600 people, Jews, Poles and Gypsies murdered. (The German Crimes in Poland, Warsaw, 1948). The figure of 700,000 is included in an article, The indictment of the trial of Treblinka (Le Monde Juif, Revue du CDJC, July 1966). Raul Hilberg speaks of 750,000 Jews and more than 800,000 casualties in total.

And now for the truth about Treblinka…

Over six days in October of 1999, Australian scientists conducted a detailed forensic examination of the soil at the site, including the use of ground penetrating radar, and found absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any mass graves ever existing there.

Apparantly the Germans dug up the ash and remains of “several million” corpses and transported the remains elsewhere, and then replaced the soils with such efficiency that modern technology could not detect the soil strata had ever been disturbed.