Polish investigations of the Treblinka killing site were a complete failure …

… in what concerns evidence to the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people.

Or so "Revisionist" guru Carlo Mattogno would like his readers to believe.

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On page 89 and following of the screed headed "Treblinka Extermination Camp or Transit Camp", which is co-authored by Mattogno and his fellow “Revisionist” guru Jürgen Graf and can be downloaded online, one reads the following:

Even the investigations performed by Lukaszkiewicz proved to be a complete failure in terms of this central question. He arranged excavation at a quite definite spot in the camp where, according to the witness S. Rajzman, a mass grave was located, but discovered nothing of the kind. He had trenches dug, 10-15 m long and 1.5 m deep, at the places where, according to witnesses, the two alleged buildings for gassing had stood, yet merely encountered "undisturbed layers of earth." To be sure, he did find skulls, but without wounds from shooting. All the evidence examined by him (coins, documents, rags, containers, remnants of various objects) show merely that there was a camp at that place, and the human remains as well as the ashes prove only that bodies were buried or cremated in the camp. Nothing produced even the trace of evidence for a mass murder, to say nothing of such a crime committed against several hundred thousandpeople.

Now let’s have a look at the reports of those supposedly failed investigations, which Mattogno did us the favor to have translated from Polish and transcribed on pages 84 ff of his book:

For the purpose of performing an official investigation of the scene of the crime, Judge Lukaszkiewicz had gone to Treblinka. As he later explained, he acted206 "[…] at the request of the State Prosecutor of the District Court in Siedlce of September 24, 1945, further induced by a letter of September 18, 1945, of the Main Commission for the Investigation of the German Murders in Poland."
After bidding farewell to the visitors, Lukaszkiewicz set to work with a group of workers. Between November 9 and 13, he undertook a thorough examination of the grounds as well as a series of excavations. Afterwards he composed an official protocol, which we reproduce in full in view of its significance:207
"Protocol of the tasks performed on the grounds of the death camp Treblinka, which forms the object of the judicial examination.
From November 9 to 13, 1945, the examining magistrate of Siedlce, Z. Łukaszkiewicz, together with the State Attorney for the District Court of Siedlce, J. Maciejewski, performed the following tasks on the camp grounds:
November 9, 1945
Excavations were begun on the grounds using the services of 20 workers who had been mustered by the village administration for carrying out roadwork. The excavations began at the location described by the witness Rajzman on November 6, where the so-called ‘camp hospital’ had stood and where, according to the witness, a mass grave is supposed to exist.
Since a bomb crater 4 to 5-meter deep is present at the said location – two bombs still lie at a slight distance from this crater – the digging was begun in this crater. In the course of this work numerous Polish, as well as Russian, German, Austrian, and Czech coins as well as broken pieces of various kinds of containers were discovered. At the end of the work, at approximately 3 pm, at a depth of 6 meters, we encountered a layer which had not been reached previously. There were no human remains found.
November 10, 1945
The work was continued, with 36 workers assigned who had been commandeered for roadwork. At a depth of 6 meters begins a layer which has never before been uncovered by anyone. It consists partly of all sorts of kitchen utensils and different kinds of household objects; there are also pieces of clothing. At a depth of 7 meters, we reached the floor of the pit – a layer of yellow sand which is not mixed with gravel. By means of expansion of the excavation we succeeded in determining the shape of the pit. It has sloping walls, and the bottom measures about 1.5 meters [sic!]. The pit was presumably excavated with an excavator. During the course of the excavations, numerous more or less badly damaged Polish documents were discovered, further a badly damaged personal identity card of a German Jew, as well as several more coins: Polish, German, Russian, Belgian, and even American. After we had made certain that this pit, filled with broken pieces of the containers mentioned, ran in a north-south direction on the grounds of the camp area – 2 meters more [in a northerly direction] had been excavated – the workers started work at this location.
November 11, 1945
A series of test excavations were performed at the place where the [gas] chambers had to have been located, in order to find their foundation walls if possible. Pits 10 - 15 meters in length and 1.5 meters deep were dug. Undisturbed layers of earth were uncovered by this.
The largest of the craters produced by explosions (numerous fragments attest to the fact that these explosions were set off by bombs), which is at maximum 6 meters deep and has a diameter of about 25 meters – its walls give recognizable evidence of the presence of a large quantity of ashes as well as human remains – was further excavated in order to discover the depth of the pit in this part of the camp. Numerous human remains were found by these excavations, partially still in a state of decomposition.[208] The soil consists of ashes interspersed with sand, is of a dark gray color and granulous in form. During the excavations, the soil gave off an intense odor of burning and decay. At a depth of 7.5 meters the bottom was reached, which consisted of layers of unmixed sand. At this point the digging was stopped here.
November 13, 1945
With the assistance of 30 workers employed for roadwork, the opening of a pit was begun – a site where refuse was deposited in the northeastern section of the camp. In this location, as the workers from the nearby hamlets explained, a very large number of documents were found up till now. Work was begun at this location where the people [of that area] had dug a three-meter-deep pit in a search for gold. During the course of the digging, broken pieces of all sorts of kitchen containers as well as a large number of rags were continually found. Aside from the coins discovered so far, Greek, Slovakian, and French ones were found, as well as documents in Hebrew and Polish and remnants of a Soviet passport. At a depth of 5 meters the work was stopped due to the steadily worsening weather conditions.
The Examining Judge The State Attorney
Lukaszkiewicz Maciejewski
Decision:
The Examining Judge of Siedlce, on November 13, 1945, rules in consideration of the fact that with great probability no mass graves are any longer to be found on the grounds of the former camp today, as is to be concluded from the witness testimonies examined so far and from the results of the works carried out at the site, and in consideration of the oncoming autumn, the present rainfall and the necessity of a rapid conclusion of the judicial preliminary investigations, in view of all these facts to stop the work on the territory of the former death camp Treblinka.
The Examining Judge
Lukaszkiewicz."
On December 29, 1945, after the conclusion of his preliminary investigations, Lukaszkiewicz issued a protocol with 14 paragraphs, which – as already mentioned – was presented by the Soviets at the Nuremberg Trial as Document USSR-344. In the third paragraph, which bears the title "Current condition of the camp terrain", it says the following:209
"With the assistance of an expert land surveyor and witnesses, I made an exact inspection of the terrain. According to the measurements, the area of the camp is approximately 13.45 hectares and had the shape of an irregular quadrilateral. No remnants of facilities of the former death camp exist any longer. The only things that remain of the structures are: a ditch with remains of burned wooden poles protruding up, which lead into the cellar, wall bricks from the foundations of the camp’s domestic economics building and the site of the well. Here and there one finds traces of the burned-out wooden poles of the fence and remains of barbed wire. There are also some sections of paved walks that remain. Nonetheless, there are still other traces that hint at the existence and functions of the camp. In the northwestern section of the area, the surface is covered for about 2 hectares by a mixture of ashes and sand. In this mixture, one finds countless human bones, often still covered with tissue remains, which are in a condition of decomposition. During the inspection, which I made with the assistance of an expert in forensic medicine, it was determined that the ashes are without any doubt of human origin (remains of cremated human bones). The examination of human skulls could discover no trace of« wounding. At a distance of some 100 m, there is now an unpleasant odor of burning and decay. In the southwestern direction, a portion of the camp terrain is covered by aluminum – enamel – glass and porcelain dishes – kitchen utensils – hand luggage – rucksacks – pieces of clothing, etc. There are innumerable holes and craters on the property."
Lukaszkiewicz summarized the investigations carried out a month earlier at that location as follows:210
"During the work on the terrain, I found no mass graves, which, in connection with the statements by the witnesses Romanowski and Wiernik, leads to the conclusion that nearly all of the bodies of the victims were burned, all the more so since the camp was liquidated early and the murderers had much time. The ground of the camp was ploughed and sown. Ukrainians were settled there, who fled before the arrival of the Red Army (witnesses Kucharek and Lopuszyński)."

The passages I bolded in the above quote make me wonder if Mattogno did not, to put it politely, forget some very important results of these investigations when proclaiming them to have been a failure. For the Polish investigators found an area of ca. 2 ha = 20,000 square meters covered by "a mixture of ashes and sand", the mixture containing "countless human bones, often still covered with tissue remains, which are in a condition of decomposition".

Mattogno’s silly speculations about Soviet manipulations of evidence aside, where could these human ashes and bones covering an area of 20,000 square meters reasonably have come from, other than from underneath that area, from where they were brought to the surface by the activity of robbery diggers looking for valuables left behind by the murdered Jews?

And what do these traces covering said area tell us, especially if coupled with the fact that – as is mentioned in the 11 November 1945 entry of the Protocol of the tasks performed on the grounds of the death camp Treblinka, which forms the object of the judicial examination, signed by Examining Judge Lukaszkiewicz and State Attorney Maciejewski – human remains were found in that area to a depth of 7.5 meters?

The likeliest conclusion is that this area of 20,000 square meters was the mass graves area, or one of the mass graves areas, of the "death camp" sector of Treblinka extermination camp, and that 7.5 meters was the depth, or the minimum depth (there are eyewitness testimonies mentioning graves 10 meters deep, and the modifications of the area’s surface by first the killers’ attempts to hide the traces of their crimes and then by robbery digs suggest the possibility of some difficulty in accurately determining the original depth) of the grave pits in that area.

Why did Mattogno not address these data? The apparent reason is that these data suggest that, contrary to what Mattogno tries to sell his readers, there was enough room in the killing area of Treblinka extermination camp to bury the bodies of at least the 713,555 Jews who, according to report sent by SS-Sturmbannführer Höfle in Lublin on 11 January 1943 to Obersturmbannführer Heim in Krakow, were delivered at Treblinka until 31.12.1942. For if on this area of ca. 20.000 square meters

• there were only ten graves with the measurements 50 x 25 meters, or a smaller number of larger graves covering an equivalent area, still leaving 7,500 square meters to enable movement in between the graves,

• each of these graves was only 7.5 meters deep, and

• no more than 8 bodies per cubic meter (a density considered possible by Mattogno, which seems rather conservative considering the calculations of Alex Bay and the experiment of Charles Provan, mentioned in my article on episodes 11 and 12 of the Ugly Voice Productions video) were buried in these mass graves,

the capacity of said graves was 50 x 25 x 10 x 7,5 = 93,750 cubic meters or 93,750 x 8 = 750,000 human bodies.

Of course this is a simplified calculation, which does not consider the presumable sloping of the mass graves and the thin layers of sand or quicklime that were scattered in between or above the bodies on the one hand and the volume reduction of the bodies in the lower layers due to the effect of decomposition and/or quicklime on the other (after all the bodies were not all thrown into the graves at the same time, and those in the lower layers can be expected to have considerably shrunk due to decomposition and/or quicklime by the time those in the upper layers were added, as was also pointed out in Section 4.1 of my article Carlo Mattogno on Belzec Archaeological Research ).

But I think it sufficient to show how Carlo Mattogno, though less shy than other "Revisionists" to show evidence that goes against his articles of faith, only sees or addresses those parts of such evidence that said articles of faith allow him to see or address.

In keeping with this tendency is Mattogno’s interest in the bomb craters mentioned by Examining Judge Lukaszkiewicz, around which Mattogno constructs the following funny conspiracy theory (pages 92/93):

Yet this is not the end of the curious aspects. Lukaszkiewicz found several bomb craters on the camp grounds and even two unexploded bombs. The largest crater was 6 m deep and possessed a diameter of approximately 25 m. Therefore the camp must have been bombed, and most surely not through an error. The Germans, who according to official historiography had wiped away all the traces of their crimes by dismantling the barracks, tearing down the walled structures, leveling, plowing the terrain and planting it with lupines, would have had no interest in bombing the camp, for in the first place there was nothing left to destroy, and in the second place, the craters produced by the bombs would have rendered visible the traces of the alleged mass murders.
From an aerial image of the camp Treblinka II taken in November 1944, it is
further revealed that the camp at that time – therefore after the area was taken by the Red Army – had not yet been bombed.219
Thus, the bombardment must have been caused by the Soviets. But the camp Treblinka had already been liquidated in November 1943, and there were no military targets in its direct 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 compatible with the thesis of mass extermination, and to lay false tracks that seemed to confirm this thesis?228

One wonders what "false tracks" those manipulating Soviets of Mattogno’s fantasies could possibly have expected to lay by bombing an area which the SS had made all efforts to give the look of innocuous agricultural or forest land, and how they could possibly have expected to lay such "false tracks" by bombing the area unless the human remains later found by Lukaszkiewicz, over an area of 20,000 square meters and to a depth of 7,5 meters (the excavation work having been made much easier by the presence of a bomb crater 6 meters deep, in which the Polish investigators only had to dig a little further «in order to discover the depth of the pit in this part of the camp», see the above-mentioned entry of 11 November 1945 in the Protocol of the tasks performed on the grounds of the death camp Treblinka, which forms the object of the judicial examination) were already there when the bombs fell. For I hope for Mattogno that he’s not trying to tell us that bombardment could have displaced human remains (especially in such amounts that they would cover an area of 20,000 square meters and saturate a pit 7.5 meters deep) from the comparatively tiny mass graves of the Treblinka I labor camp, which was somewhat removed from the Treblinka II extermination camp, to any part of the Treblinka II extermination camp.

One also wonders why Mattogno didn’t consider the much likelier possibility that these bomb craters resulted from the activity of robbery diggers, who may, for instance, have obtained such devices from a corrupt Soviet commander’s stock or even included members of Soviet artillery or engineer units who themselves took part in the "Treblinka gold rush", equipped with the necessary hardware to make big holes and thus facilitate the search for valuables presumed to have been left behind by the victims of Treblinka. The use of bombs by robbery diggers was actually mentioned expressly by Rachel Auerbach, who is quoted in this sense on pages 379/380 of Yitzhak Arad’s book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps :

Rachel Auerbach, who visited Treblinka on November 7, 1945, as part of a delegation of the Polish State Committee for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes on Polish Soil, described what she saw:

Masses of all kinds of pilferers and robbers with spades and shovels in their hands were there digging and searching and raking and straining in the sand. They removed decaying limbs from the dust [and] bones and garbage that were thrown there. Would they not come upon even one hard coin or at least one gold tooth? They even dragged shells and blind bombs there, those hyenas and jackals in the disguise of man. They placed several together, set them off [my emphasis – RM], and giant pits were dug in the desecrated ground saturated by the blood and the ashes of burned Jews ...

Scenes of this kind took also place in the fields of Belzec and Sobibor. The search for treasures continued. The area was dug up again and again, and each section of the land was checked thoroughly by local people and people from afar who tried their luck. These acts ceased only when the Polish government decided to turn the camp areas into national memorial sites.

On pages 83/84 of his book, Mattogno quotes, from Rachel Auerbach’s report translated into English under the title In the Fields of Treblinka, excerpts containing Auerbach’s description of the Treblinka site as found during a site inspection carried out on 6 November 1945. A part of this description is omitted, as signaled by […] at the end of page 83, and in the second sentence of the following section, on page 84 of Mattogno’s book, the reader is surprised by the sudden reference to «The bombs» that «had revealed the contents of the desecrated soil». These bombs had obviously been mentioned by the author before, but nowhere in the quoted text on page 83 is there a reference to them.

So could it be that the first reference to these bombs is contained in aforementioned part omitted by Mattogno, in which these bombs are expressly linked to the activity of robbery diggers?

If so, Mattogno has purposefully withheld from his readers information contradicting his pet theory of the Soviet bombardment. This would be another example of "Revisionist" intellectual (dis)honesty at its finest.

So much for now, and in case some anonymous "truth seeker" wants to tell me that these are apparently the only "mistakes" I have found in a book 371 pages long, I would like to make the following very clear: I have so far just had a brief look at Mattogno’s screed and picked out some of the claims that caught my attention. Yet even what I have seen so far shows that these are just a few of the whoppers that will make Mattogno’s Treblinka book a gratifying subject for further blog articles.