Monday, October 30, 2006

On the demise of deathcamps.org: how fakes and arrogance killed a great undertaking

The old ARC material is now online at http://death-camps.org. But what happened to the old site? I will tell the story below, and by the end of this posting hopefully you will also understand why I chose to tell it, revealing some rather embarrassing inside information.

(All images are clickable.)

Read more!

I became an associate of ARC/deathcamps.org in late 2005. Some time later I became a full member. Much later Dr. Nick Terry joined the team with my help, and, almost near the end of the whole thing, Roberto Muehlenkamp joined independently. Both Roberto and Nick can corroborate the crucial parts of this posting.

Membership in ARC was neat, but rather uneventful - in-group discussions concerned mostly secondary details on the existing pages. Sometimes new material was supplied and discussed. I can't say I had a "unique" perspective on certain historical interpretations, but there were rare moments during which I defended interpretations which differed from those accepted by "senior" members.

It all lasted until Chris Webb, a British "secretary" of ARC (and also its "treasurer" and proprietor of deathcamps.org domain) sent out the message below (Sep 19, 2006 7:43 PM; emphasis author's):

[...]

Good Day.

i dont do this lightly, Andy has sent me Lambert's statement re the building of the Treblinka gas chambers - new.

Unfortunately, its so small its really difficult to read, but what a find.

Fuchs installed shower-heads in the ceiling

10 chambers

2 Diesel engines obtained by Hackenholt

Bricks obtained from former glass factory at Malkinia

2 horse style barracks for sorting


i am trying to get it bigger - please bear with me.

This is a very good statement, describes too building of 6 watchtowers and a guardhouse.

Like Schluch - totally new to me.

best

Chris
This immediately raised an alarm for me. Lambert talking about diesels for the gas chambers? Lambert constructed these chambers, so if he said so, the engines were diesels. Which, of course, while not destroying anything ("the Holohoax story", as deniers would say) would certainly create some complications. That was not a reason for me to dismiss this alleged statement, but that certainly was a reason to examine it more closely. My suspicions were confirmed by other team members. Mike, a German gentleman who was a deathcamps.org webmaster, wrote (Sep 19, 2006 9:00 PM):
Chris,

you know my opinion re "Andy". In every case you should ask him for the exact source (file number etc) of his contributions. Nothing against you but just something to avoid a possibly big blamage one day.

Mike
To which Chris replied (Sep 19, 2006 9:14 PM):
Mike,

i understand, and you are right.

Its from Dusseldorf trial.

trust me, i am no fool.

He has sent me lots of trial papers, including a 40 page Stangl trial document.

but you are right to be cautious, and i appreciate always you looking after us.

best

chris
"trust me, i am no fool". And still no exact source. The next message from Mike was even more interesting (Sep 19, 2006 9:33 PM):
Chris,

I never said you are a fool but because Andy has sent us at least one faked pic, I intend to be a bit more cautious than usual.

And he never replied on my emails btw.

I don't understand why he keeps somewhere in the background although he is obviously interested in our matters.

I haven't found that document when I visited the Duesseldorf archive but I couldn't see and copy all of their files.

Mike
A faked picture? What the heck was going on? A proven fake, and this "Andy" still wasn't given a boot? More inane apologetics from Chris followed (Sep 19, 2006 10:01 PM):
Mike,

I do understand and accept your caution.

You must try and trust my judgement on the material supplied.

He actually works very hard for us, but wants to remain in the shadows, for whatever reason.

We must accept that, and respect his wishes, he only wants to deal with me, and i am comfortable with that, but he has worked with [name omitted].

If i have any doubts, then i dont share it, its as easy as that. He mostly sends me trial stuff now, so you can see its genuine.

Gentlemen -Please dont bombard me emails over this subject, I have said all i am going to say.

Alles Klahr
[...]
Chris Webb

ARC Secretary
Blah. So, I asked Mike for more info on this "Andy". I received it and remembered that some time earlier I was asked by Mike for my opinion on some pictures and documents of an Aktion Reinhard(t) man Feix, sent by this "Andy" ("Andy Schmidt"). To Mike and me they seemed fishy, though I didn't firmly dismiss them as forgeries back then.

Here they are:





According to the consensus of the people who have seen them (e.g. at Axis History Forum), at least the photos are fishy.

The second picture sent to me by Mike was a real smoking gun. It was purported by "Andy" to be a photo of the Treblinka "Tube". Compare this picture:

with this screenshot from the movie Escape from Sobibor:

But there's more. I remembered that the judgement in Duesseldorf Treblinka trial said:
Darüber welche Masse wirklich zutreffen, hat die Beweisaufnahme ebensowenig eine eindeutige Klärung ergeben wie über die wirkliche Anzahl der neuen Kammern, die von den Angeklagten übereinstimmend und von Anfang an mit 6, von den jüdischen Zeugen jedoch durchweg mit 10 angegeben werden.

I.e., Jewish witnesses testified about 10 chambers, defendants - about 6. And yet, this Lambert statement allegedly said that there were 10 chambers. Moreover, there was another statement, provided by "Andy", which had already been put online (and used by me in an update to my diesel article):
The defendant Münzberger – his personal statement about the upper camp

My main job in the upper camp was to stand at the entrance to the new gas chamber building with a long bull whip, driving the Jews inside as they came through the tube. The building was big, I guess about 16 x 40 metres. In the front section were the chambers and covering the entire width of the back section was the engine room. In the corridor the Jews were driven into the chambers by some Ukrainians. There were five chambers on either side. Each measured about 50 square metres and held about 300 Jews. The first chambers to be filled were chambers one and two behind the curtain. The doors to the first two chambers were shut and the next group of Jews were forced into chambers three and four. When all the chambers were filled with about 3,000 Jews, the heavy wooden doors were fastened with iron bolts. Now I went through the corridor, opened the door to the engine room, and gave a sign to Schmidt or Zänker to start both diesel engines. The Russian T34 tank engines were started by three Ukrainians and a Jew. They needed a lot of diesel. Schmidt brought the diesel from the garage in the lower camp in cans of 20 litres. The operation lasted twenty minutes, and from time to time I looked through the glass windows into the chambers. Then the Ukrainians opened the doors in the corridors and I went to the west side of the building. There I watched the emptying and cleaning of the chambers. At the same time the chambers were ventilated. All of that lasted about forty minutes. Then the big outer doors were closed and secured with wooden beams. Now Rum and his corpse team took over the transportation of bodies to the pits or burning grills, and I went back to the entrance. There Sepp brought the next group of Jews. In the peak time between August and November 1942, sometimes there were eight operations without a break. The following Germans served with me in the upper camp: Heinrich Matthes – chef, Karl Pötzinger – deputy chef, Franz Rum and Willy Großmann – corpse transport, Herbert Floss and Otto Horn – corpse burning, Karl Eiselt and Johannes Eisold – excavator drivers, Karl Ludwig and Alfred Forker – dentists, Erwin Keina and Kurt Arndt – pits, Fritz Schmidt and Hans Zänker – gas chambers, Alfred Löffler and Erwin Lambert – building team, Lothar Boelitz and Josef Hirtreiter – tube and guard, Erich Fuchs and Lorenz Hackenholt – occasional installation work.
And again 10 chambers are mentioned. How could it be, if the judgement said that Nazis testified about 6 gas chambers?

There was one difficulty, though - one of the ARC members, a brilliant Aktion Reinhard(t) researcher with access to lots of ZStL materials provided the following quote from Muenzberger's pre-trial statement (April 1st, 1960; ZStL AR-Z 230/59, Bd. 5, p. 850ff):
At that time the gas chambers only had a small entrance. When I came to Treblinka there were only 3 chambers. The big chambers were being build. Later perhaps there were 8 chambers.
Nevertheless, this statement still contradicted "Andy's" version and Muenzberger wasn't even sure about the exact number of chambers. I also remembered then that many months ago another statement was supplied by Webb, and by all indications it came from the same source. It was an alleged statement of Otto Rum, excerpts from which I also mentioned when writing about the diesel issue:



10 chambers again! The Treblinka trial verdict wasn't very accurate when it claimed that all Nazis claimed 6 gas chambers, so the judges goofed a little bit. But what is the probability that they would write what they did if the three defendants actually explicitly claimed that there were 10 gas chambers? Given that there was no reason for the judges to create a contradiction, and especially considering that the alleged statements have no provenance whatsoever (Webb and his "Andy" never specified the exact sources), the chances are nil and the statements are forgeries.

(I should note here that in the interview with Claude Lanzmann, Franz Suchomel also tentatively claimed that there were 8 gas chambers, but as I have no information about his statements to this effect during the investigation and trial, this information is neither here nor there at this moment.)

Later, when the whole affair basically ended, I also analyzed the alleged statement by Karl Alfred Schluch, supplied by "Andy":



It didn't pass the test either. In Arad's Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka on pp. 70-71 we have the following description by Schluch:
Then Hackenholt switched on the engine which supplied the gas.
Thus 1 engine, not 2. Also Arad says that Schluch served in Belzec since February or March. "Andy's" statement says June. While a numerical contradiction by itself might not be that important, "Andy's" Schluch actually bases his lack of knowledge of the old gas chambers on his month of arrival. Of course, Schluch would be aware of the old gas chambers if he arrived in February or March.

Finally, I have already quoted Carlo Mattogno's citation of Schluch's testimony in my diesel posting:
For the gassings an engine was started up. I cannot give a more detailed description of the engine, because I never saw it. I am not a specialist, but I would say that, judging from the sound, it was a medium-size diesel engine.
Mattogno is a denier, but I haven't seen him quoting any forgeries, and he always gives archival references (in this case - ZStL). So, according to this statement, Schluch also talks about "the engine" and he claims ignorance about the type of the engine! Compare with "Andy's" statement. Mattogno also claims, based on Schluch interrogation (again, giving the exact reference), that Schluch served in Belzec since April 1942 - one more hit against "Andy's" statement. So, this is just another forgery.

After being confronted with some of the above evidence, how did the group react? Well, here's where the "fun" begins. It turned that Mel, one of the "senior" members, was uneasy about "Andy's" material (Sep 23, 2006 9:19 PM):
Mike,

Today and tomorrow are Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, so I shouldn't even be writing this, but for the record, you know my views on Andy and his information. Once bitten, twice shy, as we say.

[...]
In a personal e-mail he was more explicit (Sep 24, 2006 7:30 PM). I'm not shy about quoting this personal message because of what transpired later (see below):
Sergey,

The Treblinka tube was an obvious fake, but there has been other dubious material emanating from this source. I wrote to Mike in January 2005: "As I've already written, Chris believes Andy because he wants everything to be genuine. I am more sceptical - in fact, as I've said on numerous occasions, I don't accept anything as being legitimate without verification from another source. It ain't true just because Chris says it is. We have a reputation to maintain."

I know that Mike shares my opinion. Chris seems to want to keep the identity of this "Andy" to himself for reasons unknown.
[...]
There were some stronger voices of support for me. But the cutest messages arrived from Webb, of course. Like this (Sep 30, 2006 12:47 AM):

Sergey,

I have already answered this.

There is no suspicious material on our site from Andy
or anyone else, to my knowledge.

If anyone can prove there is, we will remove it.

Anything from Andy is from museums, checked by me.

So its really nothing for you or anyone else to worry
about.

End of debate, case closed, as far as i am concerned.

Over and out,

Chris

[...]

Chris Webb

ARC Secretary
Or this (Sep 30, 2006 1:10 AM):
Sergey,

All points have been answered, and i get bored with
people dragging things up, for no good reason.

I am a founder member, fully paid up, and i have no
desire to put anything on the site that damages us.

Mike has the final say on what is uploaded, what more
is there to add.

Chris
Actually, Webb answered no points, except posting this (Sep 30, 2006 3:12 PM):
Gentlemen,

Thanks for all your emails, very interesting, good to
see people expressing their views.

ARC operates with a Board to set policy, and decide on
this kind of thing calmy and rationally.

The Board consists of Mike, Mel and myself.

If i understand group members right they want all of
Andy's stuff removed from the website?

Only email me, if that is incorrect. Thank you.

We can discuss that quite easily, without jumping on
some kind of lynching wagon.

i think we should set our sights a bit higher than
that imo.

Mike, Mel we need to agree a date.

Regards,

Chris Webb

ps. Mike can you give the Board an updateon who has
paid to be a member please.

[...]
After another member posed some good questions about the above message, Webb replied (Oct 1, 2006 10:53 AM):
[...]

Thanks for your kind wishes.

Its at Board level now, so we are spared any further
group discussion.

Hopefully, the Board meeting will take in the next few
days.

[...]
Okaaay, so "the Board" was to consider the forgeries issue. Fine. Now, imagine my, Nick's and Roberto's surprise when we found the following in our mailboxes (Oct 4, 2006 12:20 AM):
ARC - IMPORTANT BOARD ANNOUNCEMENT

To All Members of ARC,

I wish to inform you of some important decisions.

The Board have agreed a number of proposals tonight.
With immediate effect I will assume the policy making decisions of ARC within the Board Structure, of Mel, Mike and myself, taking over from Mike who felt he was unable to continue in this role.

i personally want to thank Mike for doing this, when he wasnt really confortable with it.
He really tried his best, and no-one can ask more.

Secondly, and this may surprise some of you the Board has decided to sever all contacts with members known and unknown of the Axis History Forum with immediate effect.

John will you please draw up a new list excluding

Sergey Romanov

Nick Terry

Roberto Muhlenkamp

If other current ARC members belong to this organisation, please feel free to resign immediately, if you belong to AHF, membership to ARC is barred, for life..

Obviously those that have contributed something, we thank you, and wish you well .

This decision will not be reversed, and if anyone has forwarded money to Mike [surname omitted], this may be returned if we know your address.

Regards,

Chris Webb
ARC
This is too demented to seriously comment upon. But for starters, what does AHF (a respectable forum, by the way) have to do with anything? Nothing. And where is anything about the forgeries?

What followed was not expected by Webb - Mike, the webmaster, has taken down the site and published some messages from the "Board discussion". It seems that Webb simply tried to take over the power, a putsch, if you wish - at least according to Mike's description. Interestingly, even after Mike has declared Webb a former member, Webb tried to use his name (Oct 4, 2006 11:07 AM):
Gentlemen,

[name omitted] - sorry to inform you this is not the case this time.

ARC is run by a Board, the Board agreed by a majority vote to take these actions.

No decisions are taken lightly, but i can assure you it was democratic.

There can be no discussion about it., the long term interests of ARC are at stake, and the Board have taken its decision based on those criteria.

If members do not think they can live and work within this enviornment then of course they are free to leave. .

That choice is theirs , without any hard feelings whatsover.

Regards,

Chris Webb Mel [surname omitted] Mike [surname omitted] - ARC Board Members

ARC
(To which Mike could only reply that "I never got an email in which my name was used as signature for something which I never would have said! That's simply incredible.")

Shreds of "the Board" discussions lead to some interesting insights. Mel wrote (I quote from a quote from another message):
> Mike, Chris,
>
> It will take me a little while to fully digest
> Chris' proposals, but in the interim I would say
> this:
>
> 1) I am not happy with the direction ARC has been
> taking. I agree with Chris that recruiting Sergey,
> Nick, and Roberto was a mistake, and I accept my
> share of the blame for doing so. I do not accuse any
> of them of being deniers - they simply have a
> different agenda from that of ARC (or what I believe
> ARC's should be.) They are intent on "proving"
> facts, particularly to deniers - we are (or should
> be) dedicated to reporting them. Why create a blog
> entitled "Holocaust Controversies"? What is there
> that is controversial, except the absurdities raised
> by deniers?
>
> I know nothing about Sergey, except that he is
> certainly not Russian, although he is clearly a
> fluent Russian speaker. I know even less of Nick and
> Roberto. I think P L-W is different, but hardly
> indispensable. As for Torben, as far as I recall he
> has contributed nothing. Whether the latter two are
> members of AHF I simply do not know. But I do agree
> that we must sever all connection with AHF, known
> and unknown. We agreed long ago when invited to link
> with them that didn't want to create any
> association, directly or indirectly, and I don't
> believe that should change.
>
> 2) In any organisation, somebody must be in charge.
> Even AHF has its "moderators." Mike, you have made
> it clear that you do not want to presently take on
> that role. I therefore think that Chris' suggestion
> that there be a revolving "chairman", with each of
> the three board members taking on the position
> annually, to be a sound one. We cannot continue with
> the situation as it is at present, where people who
> have become members within the last few months are
> laying down conditions for their continued
> membership. We are all sensible people; the board
> makes the rules in the manner Chris has suggested.
> If others do not like the decision, they resign.
> There can be no other way - rule my committee is
> impossible.
>
> 3) I sincerely hope that you will accept Chris'
> proposals in the spirit intended. This is not a
> question of a takeover, simply an attempt to avoid
> anarchy. I understand that none of this is going to
> thrill you, but the objective for which we all
> strive is more important than any perceived personal
> slights.

[...]
Aside from a shameful back-stabbing from Mel (who has actually supported me in some disputes with Chris and never voiced his misgivings to me), note how he raised several bogus issues. Of course, reporting the facts and "proving" the facts do not stand in any contradiction with each other. They're fully complementary. Facts reported correctly (and I mean, just correctly) are a help to us, anti-deniers. Facts reported incorrectly feed deniers. It's that simple. There is no difference in "agenda".

Leaving aside the silliness about me not being Russian, and condescending nonsense about us not being deniers (thaaaaaanks for that, buddy!), Mel actually supported Chris' (presumable) nonsense about AHF. There were, of course, no "ties" with AHF to be severed - anybody can register and post at that forum. It's if like someone was living in New York, being a member of XYZ society, and then the XYZ bosses suddenly decided to "sever all ties with New York" and exclude all New Yorkers just for the fun of it. Just demented.

Webb immediately seized the "opportunity":
mike / mel,

thanks for the support - much appreciated.

i will now write to all members informing them that
all connections with AHF are to severed, and all
members of that organisation are no longer members.

the right result and i look forward to working closely
with you both.

cheers

chris
Then the announcement followed, and Mike's reaction:
Chris, who you are, sending this out without our agreement?

Mike
And then:
mike,
Mel and i agree.
you are outvoted.
You are a member of AHF.- [nickname omitted].
You now have to make a choice, i hope you stay, but that is up to you.
The decisions have been made, the email has been sent.
I sense you backed the wrong horse with Sergey, what can i say other than its really a shame.
Cheers
Chris
And then everything went to hell, as told.

When later I asked Mike whether the forgeries issue has been discussed at all, he answered in the negative. And that is perhaps the saddest thing of all.

It's not necessary to describe the subsequent decay of the group, exacerbated by the fact that Webb was the owner of the deathcamps.org domain. If he wouldn't be, then it would be easy just to kick him out and proceed further. Alas, that wasn't the case.

Currently when you go to deathcamps.org you can see the following announcement:
Notice of Website Closure

It is with regret that we announce the closure of the Official ARC "Aktion Reinhard Camps" website.

The ARC Team has formally disbanded and all access to this site has been terminated.

We would like to take this time to announce the formation of our new research team

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.holocaustresearchproject.org
I know for certain that Chris Webb is at the heart of this new "team". Except for one another person, I don't know who has joined Webb. But ask yourself a simple question: if Chris Webb didn't admit that his "source" is unreliable; if he didn't even try to address my arguments, poking holes in his materials; if instead he tried to get me and other people (mostly uninvolved in the forgeries fiasco) out of the group; what will be the credibility of this new venture, when it opens up in November? Do you really expect not to see any materials from that "Andy", passed off as the authentic new materials, and bringing endless joy to deniers?




Finally, while all this brouhaha will give a lots of pleasure to "revisionists", don't ever forget - the most probable hypothesis about the origin of these forgeries is that they were created by a denier under a guise of a Holocaust researcher. (S)he has found some naive souls, indeed. But the bottom line is that these forgeries weren't created to "prove" the Holocaust. Quite the opposite.


Later developments: H.E.A.R.T. defenders and their methods.

Monday, October 23, 2006

IPN and Spanner's soap: a critical perspective

by Joachim Neander

[Today our guest blogger is Dr. Joachim Neander from Cracow, Poland. Dr. Neander has degrees in mathematics (Saarbrücken University, 1962) and history (Göttingen and Bremen Universities, 1997). He is the author of Mathematik und Ideologie, München 1974, Das Konzentrationslager Mittelbau in der Endphase der NS-Diktatur, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1997, 4th ed. 2001, Gardelegen 1945, Magdeburg 1998, “Hat in Europa kein annäherndes Beispiel” ... Mittelbau-Dora, ein KZ für Hitlers Krieg, Berlin 2000. His articles about the human soap issue:
"Seife aus Judenfett – Zur Wirkungsgeschichte einer zeitgenössischen Sage" in: FABULA – Journal of Folktale Studies – 46 (2005), Heft 3/4
"The Danzig Soap Case – Facts and Legends around “Professor Spanner” and the Danzig Anatomic Institute 1944-1945" in German Studies Review, Vol. 29, No. 1 (February 2006).

He is a regular contributor to PRO MEMORIA (Oświęcim, Poland), Informationen des Studienkreises Deutscher Widerstand (Frankfurt am Main, Germany), German Studies Review (Carleton College, USA), Yad Vashem Studies (Jerusalem, Israel), Newsletter des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts (Frankfurt am Main, Germany).

Guest bloggers' opinions are not necessarily shared by the HC team.

This item is placed here solely to facilitate further discussion.]


Having done research in the soap legend and its role in Holocaust denial, anti-Revisonism, and history politics, I am not surprised neither with the view presented by the IPN at the October 6, 2006, press conference at Gdansk, nor with its spokeswoman’s statement given to western press agencies. The IPN is neither an independent entity, nor is it a scholarly institution. It is a government agency and bound to directives given from above. Its President is chosen and sworn in by the Sejm, Poland’s parliament. One of IPN’s three departments is the Committee for the Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish People. Its members are state prosecutors, not historians. It is the immediate successor of the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes Against the Polish People (founded already in 1944) that made the investigations in the Danzig soap case in the beginning of May, 1945, and it conducted the investigations also this time.

Read more!

After last year’s political landslide which brought a firmly nationalistic coalition to power and made the Prime Minister’s twin brother President, Leon Kieres, head of the IPN from 1999 and a man known for impartiality - he was responsible for the Jedwabne investigations that deeply hurt Poland's nationalist feelings – was fired and replaced by a personality who was better acceptable to the majority in the Sejm. In addition, the IPN obtained from the parliament, as principal task, "To document and to evaluate Poland's human and economic losses due to the German attack and occupation in World War II." IPN had not only been attacked because of the Jedwabne case. (It proved that the perpetrators had been local Poles and not “unidentified Germans”). When it, in September 2005, publicly declared that the Danzig Anatomic Institute was not involved in the Nazi genocidal enterprise, a wave of furious and slanderous attacks swept through the Polish media. IPN was accused of national treachery and “toadying the Germans.” In the anti-German political climate of today’s Poland, IPN had no way out: it must sound the retreat.

As all information was only given orally by the IPN spokespersons and media reports differ widely, I will only comment on the intersection of the statements published in the media. First and foremost, IPN confirmed its stance that the activities of the Danzig Anatomic Institute, in no way, did qualify as genocide. IPN further stated that soap was made there from human remains – a fact already admitted at the end of 1945 by Spanner himself – and that there was no “soap factory,” but only a small-scale production for strictly internal use. All this tallies with my own research results. IPN also remarked that the famous “RIF” soap had nothing to do with Danzig and was not made from human fat, an also well-known fact, but it is good to remember the public from time to time of it.

There are, however, several points to which I cannot agree. IPN could not present new sources from eyewitnesses. Presenting to a TV audience the soap samples and the professor from the Warsaw Agricultural Academy who had analyzed them, was a good PR gag but did not bring new information. All alleged “new” witnesses were either witnesses from hearsay or had visited the institute months after it had been abandoned by the German scientists at the end of January 1945 and after its devastation, two months later, in the chaotic days of the Battle of Danzig and its immediate aftermath. IPN sweepingly discredited all evidence from the German side as “not trustworthy,” but accepted all incriminating evidence presented already in 1945, as “trustworthy,” without the slightest source criticism. As an historian, I am used to gauge sources critically: to treat every source seriously, but never to take it, from the outset, at face value. And sometimes it is also helpful to use common sense.

A second point of my criticism is the heavily biased way the “victims” of the soap-making were presented, particularly in the statement given to the western press: “Human remains have been brought ... from Kaliningrad, Bydgoszcz, and the Stutthof Nazi concentration camp.” As 99.99 per cent of the readers/listeners of this information are not specialized in Holocaust history, they will conclude: Bydgoszcz – Poles, Stutthof – Jews (in Poland: also Poles), Kaliningrad – Russians were boiled to soap. And so it arrived at the public, which can easily be seen by crawling the Web. And that is against the facts which IPN certainly knows. In the period to be considered for the soap-making, i.e. February 1944 to January 1945, for legal and practical reasons, neither corpses from Jews, nor from executed Poles or Russians could have been delivered to the institute. There may have been a few exceptions – even Nazi Germans were not always law-abiding. But all eyewitnesses who testified in 1945/46 confirmed that toward the end of the war, the “material” came from the Conradstein/Kocborowo insane asylum and from the prisons of Danzig/Gdansk, Elbing/Elblag, and Königsberg/Kaliningrad. That means, however, that the dead resp. executed must have been, in their great majority, non-Jewish German citizens. But “Germans” are never mentioned. By the way, I would like to know how the emaciated Stutthof prisoners would have been a suitable “raw material” for soap production. But such contradictions are characteristic for folktales and legends. They never bother neither the narrator, nor the listener.

My last remark will be about the statement of the chairman of the IPN committee, reported in all Polish media, that “the activities of Prof. Spanner [wartime head of the Anatomic Institute] belong to the most sinister chapters of World War II.” Well, it is in line with the commonly held opinion in Poland: that Spanner was “a monster,” an “arch-criminal,” “the prime example of the degeneration of scientists in Nazi Germany” (all quotes from teaching aids). It fits into the principal task traditionally assigned to Polish historiography by the national elites: to warm the people’s hearts and to foster national beliefs. But it is bad history. Spanner was neither a super-Mengele, nor an über-Clauberg. Just “a looter of corpses.”

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Lying about Wiernik

An old Nazi from Canada, Wilfried Heink, who, in absence of any serious knowledge about the Holocaust, likes to spout deniers' arguments at RODOH, without ever realizing that they're nothing but BS, has recently brought up an old canard about Yankel Wiernik's sketches, which was invented by our favorite victims, Mattogno and Graf. He writes:
Ok, enough for now, but there is more, so, stay tuned. Here then is the map which accompanied this report, or so we are told. Mattogno/Graf in their above mentioned book give it the following caption:

“Plan of Treblinka, enclosed with the Report of November 15, 1942. From: Krystyna Marczewska and Wladyslaw Wazniewski, “Treblinka w swietle akt Delegatury Rzadu na Kraj” (Treblinka in Light of the Documents of the Government Delegation for the Country), in: Biuletyn Glownej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce, Volume XIX, Warsaw 1968, p. 141.”


The similarity between this map and that of Wiernik is remarkable.
So, let's turn to Heink's source, M&G's Treblinka book, and examine their claims.

Mattogno and Graf write (links to images are included):
Document 4 in the Appendix shows the plan of Treblinka, which Wiernik has published in order to lend credibility to his claims. In reality, he quite simply copied the plan, which was enclosed with the report about the steam chambers dating from November 15, 1942 (see Document 2 in the Appendix).
Both plans bear the same designation: “Treblinka. Szkic orientacyjny” (Treblinka, orientation sketch); both depict the same map legends; and, on both, the facilities are numbered 1 through 26, which indeed is explained in the report of November 15, 1942, but not, however, in Wiernik‘s exposition. The first three “extermination chambers,” which in the report of November 15, 1942, are called “steam chambers,” but in that of Wiernik are called “gas chambers,” are designated by the number 14 in both plans. Correspondingly, a boiler room for the production of steam is represented by number 15a in the report of November 15, 1942, and in Wiernik‘s plan it is a gassing engine. In addition, the description of the two gassing installations – the first with three and the second with ten chambers – fully and completely corresponds to the report of November 15, 1942, and to the camp plan which was enclosed with it!
Precisely for the reason that it is the fruit of plagiarism, Wiernik‘s sketch has a paucity of features of this kind: not only are many buildings of the camp missing, but also the cremation grills, although he wrote his report in the year 1944. Wiernik ‘rectified’ his error only in 1945 by furnishing a new, ‘corrected’ plan of Treblinka. If one compares this with that of the year before, the plagiarism shows up even more glaringly. On the occasion of Session 66 of the Jerusalem Eichmann Trial, Wiernik produced the plan from 1945, which entered the records as Document T-1300, yet mendaciously claimed to have drawn it in the year 1943.
Thus it is clear that Wiernik quite simply plagiarized the plan of the report of November 15 and in doing so replaced the word “steam chambers” with “gas chambers”. Why did he do this? Presumably he was of the opinion – and to be sure with good reason – that the then current versions of mass murders in Treblinka were too simpleminded. On the other hand, the idea of the engine compellingly suggested itself.
First of all, to accuse Wiernik of plagiarism, Mattogno and Graf have to show that Wiernik claimed to have produced the sketch published in his book. Did he ever claim this? Not to my knowledge. And Mattogno and Graf never cite any source which states that Wiernik claimed to be the author of the sketch.

The book was not "published" by Wiernik - he was the author, but the book was published by the Jewish Coordinating Commission in Poland. Most probably, they had an access to 1942 underground report and simply included the sketch from this report (in a "corrected" form) with the book.

Now, the sketch published by Friedman in 1945 is indeed authored by Wiernik, according to his own testimony. M&G claim that "if one compares this with that of the year before, the plagiarism shows up even more glaringly". Really? When I compare, I see two different sketches, which are similar, because they depict the same camp. No evidence of plagiarism in this instance has been provided.

M&G also accuse Wiernik of lying during the Eichmann trial. But all they show is that 1) they haven't read Wiernik's testimony during that trial in full; 2) they simply can't read English. Here's what Wiernik said:
Q. After the War, immediately following the War, you drew a sketch of Treblinka?

A. Yes. This is it, here. I drew it. I prepared it when I was still underground, after my liberation in 1943, I drew it. I was working in Warsaw, in the Tashitza Palace. I worked as a Pole.

Attorney General: I submit the sketch which the witness made at the time.

Presiding Judge: This will be marked T/1300.
According to M&G, T/1300 is the sketch published by Friedman in 1945. Let's take their word for this.

M&G write:
Wiernik produced the plan from 1945, which entered the records as Document T-1300, yet mendaciously claimed to have drawn it in the year 1943
Let's examine two questions:

1) Did Wiernik claim to have drawn the sketch in 1943?
2) Does the fact that the sketch was published in 1945 mean that it was drawn in 1945, and not earlier?

The answers are as follows:

1a) No. He claimed to have drawn it after his liberation (which happened in 1943), while still in underground. I.e., M&G can't comprehend English.

1b) Later in the testimony Wiernik was asked more questions about the sketch T/1300:
Judge Halevi: [to witness] When you were a member of the Armia Ludowa, was it then that you drew this sketch?

Witness Wiernik: I prepared it when I was working in Warsaw in the Tashitza Palace. The SS was there on the one side, and I was a night watchman against air attacks - I also have a certificate about that. I used to sit there at night. Nobody disturbed me, and I gradually made that sketch.

Q. Do you remember in what month and what year you drew this sketch?

A. It was in 1944. It took a long time. I also wrote A Year in Treblinka. In 1944, it was already in America, via the underground.
So he explicitly said that he drew it in 1944. I.e., M&G didn't even read his rather short testimony in full.

2) The answer to this question is a simple "No". An obvious non sequitur.

So, what is left of M&G's charge of plagiarism against Wiernik? Only their own mendacity.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part VIII: The Simferopol Massacres

On pages 210 f. of the screed Treblinka. Vernichtungslager oder Durchgangslager? , written by our regular customers Carlo Mattogno and Jürgen Graf and available for free online download here, we read the following text:
d. Simferopol and the Manstein Trial
General Field Marshall Erich von Manstein was Commander of the Eleventh Army and was fighting on the Black Sea and in the Crimea. In 1949, he came before a British military court in Hamburg on charges of complicity in the massacres committed by Einsatzgruppe D. His defense counsel was the Englishman Reginald T. Paget, who wrote a book – translated into German the year after – about the trial in 1951.593 In it, he reports the following concerning the activities of Einsatzgruppe D in the Crimea:594
"To me, the numbers stated by the SD appeared to be entirely impossible. Individual companies of about 100 men with about 8 vehicles are declared to have killed 10,000 to 12,000 Jews in two or three days. Since, as one will recall, the Jews believed in a resettlement and consequently took their belongings along with them, the SD could not possibly have transported more than twenty or thirty Jews respectively in one truck. For each vehicle, with loading, 10 km of driving, unloading and return, an estimated two hours had to elapse. The Russian winter day is short and there was no night driving. In order to kill 10,000 Jews, at least three weeks would have been necessary.
In one case we were able to check the numbers. The SD claimed to have killed 10,000 Jews in Simferolpol in November and declared the city free of Jews in December. Through a series of counter-tests, we were able to prove that the shooting of Jews in Simferopol had taken place on a single day, namely on November 16. There was only a single SD company in Simferopol. The place for the execution was situated 15 km away from the city. The number of victims could not have been greater than 300, and these 300 were in all probability not only Jews, but a collection of different elements who were under suspicion of belonging to the resistance movement. The Simferopol affair leaked out at the time of the trial to broad strata of the public, since it was being mentioned by the sole living witness to the charge, an Austrian private by the name of Gaffal. He claimed that he had heard the Jewish operation mentioned in a sappers’ mess, where he was the ordnance man, and that he had passed by the place of execution near Simferopol. After this testimony we received a quantity of letters and were able to produce several witnesses who had stayed near Jewish families in the Quarter and reported about the religious services in the synagogue as well as a Jewish market, where they bought icons and junk goods – up to the time of Manstein‘s departure from the Crimea and afterwards. There was no doubt at all that the Jewish community in Simferopol had continued to exist openly, and although some of our opponents had heard rumors of violence by the SD against the Jews in Simferopol, it nevertheless appeared that the Jewish community was unaware of any particular danger."
Mattogno & Graf quote Manstein’s defense attorney Reginald T. Paget in the context of their attempt to demonstrate that the "Operational Situation Reports USSR" of the Einsatzgruppen killing squads from Reinhard Heydrich’s Sicherheitsdienst (SD), which are among the most direct and damning evidence to Nazi mass killings and can be partially read in English translation under this link, were much exaggerated by their authors and that the real number of executions carried out by these killing squads was much lower than becomes apparent from said reports. The superiors of the Einsatzgruppen commanders, all the way up to Heydrich and Himmler themselves, must have been very naïve and trusting fellows who didn’t think it necessary to implement any control mechanism to check the accuracy of what was being reported to them about the execution of their orders, or then they didn’t give a damn about the extent to which their orders were actually being carried out, while the Einsatzgruppen commanders, on the other hand, are supposed not to have taken their job very seriously and routinely cheated their superiors by claiming achievements far beyond what they had really accomplished.

Manstein’s defense attorney Paget seems to have believed in this rather unlikely scenario, or so he told his readers in the book he wrote about Manstein’s trial. In the following, we will have a look at the consistency and accuracy of Paget’s claims.

Let us start with Paget’s general doubts about the logistical possibility of accomplishing massacres of the size and within the time reported.

Paget claims that there are reports in which «about 100 men with about 8 vehicles are declared to have killed 10,000 to 12,000 Jews in two or three days». This was impossible, Paget contends, because transporting the victims to the execution site was a bottleneck that could not be overcome as the special detachments of the SD had too few vehicles and couldn’t fill them to capacity with people because the Jews earmarked for execution took their belongings with them, believing they were to going be resettled.

Paget’s assumption underlying this claim is that the victims were taken with motor vehicles from the cities or towns where they lived to secluded execution sites somewhat further away. This was not necessarily so. At the Babi Yar massacre on 29/30 September 1941, for instance, the over 30,000 victims were marched in a long line to a ravine near the city of Kiev, where they were shot down. At Kharkov in mid-December 1941, about 15,000 Jews were marched to a tractor factory outside the city, at which they were concentrated and near which they were later shot, in the first days of January 1942. In my article Neither the Soviets nor the Poles have found any mass graves with even only a few thousand bodies ..., some evidence regarding this massacre is shown.

But even where the victims were taken with motor vehicles to a killing site outside their city or town and bumped off upon arrival at that site, the limitations invoked by Paget did not necessarily apply.

For one thing, the Einsatzgruppen, as we shall see in regard to the massacre that will be more closely described later in this article, could count on vehicles made available by the German Wehrmacht, including captured enemy trucks and requisitioned civilian buses, in order to have a transportation capacity adequate to the size and intended time frame of the respective killing operation.

The transport space available could further be stretched by stating a limitation to the amount of belongings that the Jews were allowed to take along for the alleged deportation, or by ordering them to leave behind all their belongings, which allegedly would be delivered to them later. This procedure was applied in killings with gas vans, see Kogon, Langbein, Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, page 91 (quote from the testimony of Ramasan Sabitovich Chugunov, platoon leader of a battalion of local auxiliary police, regarding the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto in Oktober 1943) and page 121 (testimony of Polish railway worker Vladyslav Dabrovski regarding transports to Chelmno extermination camp). As we will see later in this article, it was also applied on at least one occasion when Jews were driven to an out-of-town killing site to be shot there.

The larger versions of the gas vans used by the Einsatzgruppen were described by several eyewitnesses as taking in 50, 60 or even more people at a time (Kogon et al, as above, page 87, quote from testimony of gas van driver Erich Gnewuch; page 91, quote from testimony of Chugunov, as above; page 98, reference to testimony of gas van driver Pauly; page 105, reference to testimony of Schiewer, member of Einsatzkommando 11a; page 128, quote from testimony of gas van driver Gustav Laabs, Chelmno; page 141, quote from written report by gas van driver Walter Piller). The measurements of the gassing compartment of one such van were stated to have been the following by gas van driver Burmeister, Chelmno (quote from testimony in Kogon et al, page 125): 4 to 5 meters long, 2.2 meters wide and 2 meters high – a loading area of at least 8.8 square meters, enough to accommodate at least 70 people. So we can assume that, if the trucks used to transport Jews to shooting sites were as big as the huge versions of the gas vans applied at a later stage of the extermination process, each of these trucks could carry at least 50 Jews to the respective shooting site.

As concerns the transport time required, it is hard to understand why a 10 km drive including loading and unloading would take as long as Paget’s «estimated two hours». If the required pressure was applied, fifteen minutes for each loading at the place of concentration, driving (at a speed of merely 40 km/h), unloading and returning seems enough time. So the eight trucks that Paget mentions could, under my above assumptions, transport 400 Jews to the killing site every hour and 2,800 in one assumed winter working day from 9:00 to 16:00 hours. By increasing the number of vehicles through recourse to Wehrmacht stocks and/or requisitions, this number could easily be doubled or tripled.

As to the tasks of cordoning off the killing site, ordering the victims to undress, leading them to the mass grave or ravine where or into which they were to be shot and shooting them down there, the special detachments of the Einsatzgruppen didn't perform these alone but with the assistance of other forces, such as the order police and the Wehrmacht's Feldgendarmerie (military police) and Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police). Thus, for instance, the Babi Yar massacre was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C in cooperation «with the HQ of EGC and two Kommandos of the police regiment South». According to German historian Wolfram Wette ("Babij Yar 1941", in: Wolfram Wette / Gerd R. Ueberschär (editors), Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Jahrhundert, pages 152-164), Sonderkommando 4a was made up of members of the Sicherheitsdienst and the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police), one company of a Waffen-SS battalion and one platoon of a police battalion, and reinforced by another two police battalions and units of Ukrainian auxiliary police; the task of supervising and guarding the march of Kiev’s Jews to the ravine in which they were killed was carried out by Wehrmacht troops under the orders of city commandant Eberhard. The massacre of the Jews of Kharkov in early January 1942 was jointly carried out by Sonderkommando 4a in conjunction with Police Battalion 314, which was in charge of cordoning off the killing site. In the massacre that will be more closely described later in this article, the special detachment from Einsatzgruppe D was reinforced by policemen from two police reserve battalions as well as members of Feldgendarmerieabteilung(FGA) 683 and the unit 647 of the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP).

To sum it up, if «about 100 men with about 8 vehicles» (Paget) were not sufficient to kill the required number of Jews within the required time frame, additional human and material resources could be obtained to the extent required for achieving the desired result.

The fallacies of Paget’s logistical objections thus exposed, we now turn to the particular operation regarding which Paget was allegedly «able to check the numbers», the killing of the Jews of Simferopol.

Paget claims to have been «able to prove that the shooting of Jews in Simferopol had taken place on a single day, namely on November 16», that «the number of victims could not have been greater than 300» and that «these 300 were in all probability not only Jews, but a collection of different elements who were under suspicion of belonging to the resistance movement».

A detailed reconstruction of events at Simferopol in November and December 1941, based on documentary evidence and on numerous eyewitness testimonies recorded in the course of various investigations by West German criminal justice authorities, can be found on pages 323 ff. of the book Besatzungspolitk und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941-1943, by historian Andrej Angrick. This reconstruction, of which I will provide a summary hereafter, shows Paget’s above-mentioned claims to be false.

At the beginning of November 1941, Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppe D, transferred the staff of his unit from Nikolajev to Simferopol, the Crimea’s capital. Simferopol was an important base of German troops and supplies, the staffs of the XXXth and LIVth Army Corps, the 72nd and 22nd Infantry Divisions, the Head Quarter Master, the Commander of the Luftwaffe at 11th Army and the competent Economics Command having their headquarters there. The city’s administration was in the hands of Local Command Post (Ortskommandantur) I/853 under Captain Kleiner, which made a census of the local population according to their ethnicity and found that, of originally 156,000 inhabitants, 120,000 of various population groups had remained in Simferopol, thereof 11,000 of originally 20,000 Jews. Regarding these Jews, the local command post’s report, which was dated 14 November 1941 and is kept in the German Federal Archives/Military Archives (Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv), stated that they would be "executed by the SD".

While this document makes clear that there was the intention of wiping out the Jews of Simferopol and that the Wehrmacht was aware of this, two problems kept this killing from being carried out in November 1941. One of these problems was of an ideological, the other of a practical nature.

The ideological problem was that, in the Crimean peninsula, there were three different population groups that were potentially subject to Nazi policies regarding Jews. These were:

1. The Karaim, a Turkic people that adhered to Judaism;

2. The Krimchaks or Krymchaks: according to Angrick, they were descendants of Spanish Sephardic Jews who no longer adhered to the Jewish religion (other information on the Krimchaks can be found here);

3. Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from Central Europe and their descendants.

While there was no doubt that the third of these groups would be wiped out, there was uncertainty among Nazi policy makers about how to handle the other two. After consulting his "scientific" experts on "Jewish matters", Himmler himself – who claimed it his prerogative to decide who was and who was not a Jew – eventually decided that the Karaim would be spared, as they were not Jewish by "race". The Krimchaks, on the other hand, would be killed, because "racially" they were Jews. Himmler’s decision must have been taken between 5 December 1941 (the date of Operational Situation Report 142, which still refers to the "Krimchak issue") and 9 December 1941, the date on which, as will be detailed later on, the Krimchaks of Simferopol were wiped out.

The practical problem hindering the extermination of Simferopol’s Jews in November 1941 was that partisan activity in the area, widely exaggerated in German army reports, led the Supreme Command of 11th Army to throw every man it could get into fighting the partisans, and Einsatzgruppe D was used for reconnaissance duty on partisan movements.

By the beginning of December 1941, however, the threat had become less after about a thousand partisans had been killed or captured, and with the arrival of a Romanian mountain brigade as reinforcement Ohlendorf no longer had to use his men for anti-partisan reconnaissance duty. At the same time, the transfer of Sonderkommando 11b under Werner Braune from Odessa to Simferopol brought him additional resources to carry out his task proper, wiping out the Jews. This was favored, even urged, by Wehrmacht Head Quarter Master Hauck, who saw the "action regarding the Jews" (Judenaktion) as a means to ease the dramatic food situation in Simferopol by getting rid of mouths to feed. 11th Army commander von Manstein himself had condoned the killings in an order he issued on 20 November 1941, which contained the following passage (my translation from Angrick, as above page 338):

For the need of visiting harsh atonement on Jewry, the spiritual carrier of Bolshevism, the soldier must show understanding. It is also necessary in order to choke at birth all revolts, which are mostly incited by Jews.
The "harsh atonement" began at Simferopol on 9 December 1941, when Sonderkommando 11b and the staff of Einsatzgruppe D wiped out the city's Krimchaks, probably at least 1,500 people. Thereafter the killing stopped for two days because Ohlendorf had to solve a personnel problem: the policemen of the 4th Company of Police Reserve Battalion 9, who had assisted Einsatzgruppe D in its massacres since the beginning of the Russian campaign, were tired of killing and had requested being given another duty. Their request had been granted, and Ohlendorf had to wait for the replacement unit, the 3rd Company of Police Reserve Batallion 3, to arrive at Simferopol.

When 3rd Company of Police Reserve Battalion 3 arrived at Simferopol, there was no time for getting its men used to the killing on a gradual basis. With the assistance of available men from other detachments of Einsatzgruppe D, the policemen of both police battalions and the detached members of FGA 683 and GFP 647, Braune’s Sonderkommando 11b and Ohlendorf’s staff of Einsatzgruppe D continued the execution on 11 December 1941. Braune had told his men that they had a "major combat day" (Grosskampftag) ahead and even the medics would have to take part. The killing of the Jews lasted for three days. The Jews were ordered to gather in the area of the former Communist Party building in the city center and to hand over their bags and valuables, for – so their killers told them – these could otherwise be stolen during the transport that was to take them to labor service, and they would receive them afterwards. Trucks of the Einsatzgruppe and the army, buses and also smaller booty vehicles were used to quickly bring the people to an anti-tank ditch outside Simferopol. The members of Police Reserve Battalion 3 had to take part in the murder right away. Some of them had noticed that colleagues of Police Reserve Battalion 9 had "cracked"; now they understood why. Again and again, in the presence of Ohlendorf and Braune, there was the command "Ready, aim, fire!". 50 men firing in salvos were standing in a row. So-called coups de grace were administered by experienced members of the Einsatzgruppe. Wehrmacht soldiers also participated in the shooting, it being unclear whether these were exclusively military policemen and members of the Geheime Feldpolizei. In the icy cold chosen prisoners had to pile up the corpses in the ditch so that no space would be wasted, others dragged corpses lying aside to the pit and threw them in. Whoever tried to flee or faked death was shot by the men of the Einsatzgruppe with machine pistols. The perpetrators' cynicism was ever present, like when the instruction was given not to waste another bullet on a Jewess still alive lying in the pit because a heap of earth would be thrown unto the corpses and she would then choke anyway. A young Jew had tried to resist, whereupon the leader of the action ordered not to shoot him but to beat him dead. Thus the murder went on the following days. Eventually the Einsatzgruppe also extended its action to the city’s Gypsies, a request from the army having presumably been one of the factors that led to the decision to also remove this population group.

In Operational Situation Report USSR Nr. 150 of 02.01.1942, Ohlendorf reported that, with the end of the action on 15 December 1941, Simferopol, along with other parts of the Crimea, had been made free of Jews. This turned out to be a mistake, as many Jews were still in hiding. Smaller massacres throughout the Crimea followed until the end of the year.

Thus ends my summary of Angrick’s reconstruction of events at Simferopol in November and December of 1941. As I said before, this reconstruction is based on documentary evidence and numerous eyewitness testimonies. The above description of the massacre starting 11 December 1941, for instance, is based on the testimonies of eyewitnesses recorded in investigation files of West German criminal justice authorities and referred to on pages 340 to 342 of Angrick’s book: Paul Zapp, Sergej Myshekov, Georg Glück, Hermann Frenser, Georg Mandt, Hans Günther, Hans Kurz, Hans Fibiger, Walter Güsfeldt, Fritz Urbach, Kurt Wehrbein, Karl Jonas, Heinz Hoffmann, Harry Pilawski, Wilhelm Ickerott, Paul Lohmann, and others. These eyewitnesses, except probably for the Soviet witness Myshekov, had participated in the killing as members of one or the other unit involved therein.

A translation of Ohlendorf’s statement in Operational Situation Report USSR 150 can be read here:

Simferopol, Yevpatoria, Alushta, Krasubasar, Kerch, and Feodosia and other districts of western Crimea are free of Jews. From November 16 to December 15, 1941, 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Krimchaks, 824 Gypsies, and 212 Communists and partisans have been shot. Altogether, 75,881 persons have been executed.
The latter figure referred to the total number of executions by Einsatzgruppe D since the beginning of the Russian campaign. The greatest part of the Crimea figures probably correspond to the Simferopol massacres, followed by the massacres at Kerch in the first days of December (ca. 2,500 Jews) and at Feodosia around 10 December 1941 (over 1,000 Jews and Krimchaks), also described in detail by Angrick.

It is thus clear that Paget’s claim about a single small-scale massacre at Simferopol on 16 November 1941 has nothing to do with the historical record of the fate of Simferopol’s Jews and Krimchaks, most of whom were killed in the massacres on 9 December and after 11 December 1941.

What, now, does this mean regarding Paget’s claim that there were «several witnesses who had stayed near Jewish families in the Quarter and reported about the religious services in the synagogue as well as a Jewish market, where they bought icons and junk goods – up to the time of Manstein‘s departure from the Crimea and afterwards»? Is this a deliberately false claim, or were the witnesses false witnesses eager to get Manstein off the hook?

Not necessarily. As we have seen above, Himmler decided to spare the Karaim because they were not considered Jews in "racial" terms. The Karaim practice Karaite Judaism, and contact with the Karaim population of Simferopol may thus have led Paget’s witnesses to describe them as Jews and to believe that the Jews of Simferopol had not been wiped out.

Paget’s erroneous claims may be excusable for a defense attorney in the late 1940s, with limited access to information about the pertinent events and concerned only with defending his client as best as he could.

But is it also excusable for Mattogno & Graf, who pretend to be historians or researchers of history, to take Paget’s claims at face value and, without cross-checking them against other sources, transcribing them into their book as if they were indisputable statements of fact?

Look at what Angrick did: he collected all documentary and eyewitness evidence he could find in a number of archives and put together the bits and pieces he found into a picture of events as accurate as possible.

That’s what historians do.

Mattogno & Graf, on the other hand, based their conclusions regarding the Simferopol massacres on a single source – not even a primary one – that happened to fit their preconceived notions.

That’s not what historians do. That’s what sloppy charlatans with an ideological agenda do. Mattogno & Graf are not revising acknowledged notions about a certain historical event or set of events based on hitherto unknown evidence. What they are doing is to ignore or dismiss all evidence contradicting their pre-conceived notions – which in this case, the Simferopol massacres, is rather abundant – and base their conclusions on a convenient secondary source that is as much at odds with the evidence as their pre-conceived notions.

And that, again, is why "Revisionism", as represented by Mattogno & Graf among other "scholars", has nothing to do with revisionism in the proper sense of the word, that of a method which is part of historiography. It is nothing but denial of events inconvenient to certain pre-conceived notions and articles of faith, ideologically motivated propaganda.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Richard Glazar on Jean-Francois Steiner

Below you'll find Treblinka survivor Richard Glazar's critique of Jean-Francois Steiner's book about Treblinka.

Thanks go to Peter Laponder for the text. I have corrected some typos and spelling irregularities.

Read more!

Yad Vashem catalogue numbers: E/72-1-4
E/1152
Ing. Richard Glazar
Zbrojnická 4
Prague 6 – Střešovice
CHECHOSLVAKIA


Yad Washem [sic.]
Har Hazikaron POB 84
Jerusalem
Israel

29th June 1968
Dear Friends,

Being one of the few Treblinka survivors and the sole living at present in Czechoslovakia I should like to contact you with the regard to my own memoirs as well as to the book written by a young French journalist François Steiner.

Last year a Czech monthly called “Mezinárodní politika” [International Politics] published successively as serial in all the twelve numbers of 1967 my Treblinka story which I wrote and prepared for this purpose in an abbreviated form. As specimen I enclose the cutting from number 6/1967 containing the chapter called “Hangmen and Grave-diggers”. This year I am writing the full version for a book of 300 pages approx. which according to preliminary contract should be published by a Czech Publishing House sponsored by Union of Antifascist Fighters here. I hope to have the manuscript finished by the end of September. One of our outstanding writers, Arnošt Lustig, whose novels and stories have been translated into your language, read what I have already written and recommended me to finish and publish the Treblinka story as soon as possible. A synopsis of the book has also been sent to Victor Gollanz Publishing House in London and they have shown interest in it.

Several months ago a French version of Mr. Steiner’s book on Treblinka got into my hands. Reading it was a horrible shock to me as it must have been to all eyewitnesses of Treblinka. I decided to write my criticism on Steiner and his book, especially when I heard that it became a bestseller in France. I enclose a copy of my “discussion with Mr. Steiner” translated into English and leave to your opinion and decision what publicity you will give it.

Of course, I should be happy if both my criticism of Steiner and my own story would be published in Israel. Everything I am writing now on Treblinka is based on notes of more than 300 pages which I made as early as in 1944 and 1945 and which I had not had the time and possibility to publish earlier.

Last year in May on the request of the BBC Television London I joined their special filming crew in Warsaw, went with them to Treblinka and made with them on the spot a 15 minute TV film. The film then has run in two evenings for about 17 millions of British viewers in the so called “24 hour’s programme.”

During the last seven years I went three times to the court in Düsseldorf, Federal Germany, to witness against the former SS from Treblinka. Last November I gave evidence in a preliminary investigation against F. P. Stangl, the former commander in chief of the Treblinka camp. Stangl, as you may know, has been caught as late as this March in Brazil, Saõ Paolo. The trial, as I was informed, is expected to be held in Düsseldorf probably at the end of this year.

May I add at the close of my letter that my mother, Mrs. Olga Bergman, visited your Institute during her stay in Israel in 1964 and that you subsequently wrote both to her and to me asking for my recollections on Treblinka.

The two papers I am sending you today under the same cover are the first of what I feel you should have from me and I shall not fail to let you have my book as soon as it appears. But this will not be earlier than 1969. Would you be in the meantime interested in the abbreviated form, i.e. in the twelve “To be continued Chapters” published in the above mentioned monthly? I wonder also what are the possibilities in your country of translating Czech texts.


Yours sincerely
Richard Glazar



TREBLINKA AS SEEN AND AS DESCRIBED IN WRITING



A quarter of a century is slowly piling up on Treblinka. Of the authentic statements made by the few unfortunates who were able to and did give testimony immediately after the liberation, none received such publicity that “the world got to know about it”. On the other hand, twenty-eight year-old French journalist, Jean Francois Steiner, succeeded. He described his almost four-hundred page book, which was published in 1966 - of course, entitled “Treblinka” - as a “stage-produced or staged narration”. It became a bestseller at once. But it also aroused indignation. The first time I read it, I did so, in a single day and night, and a very bad night it was for me –

The problems of cowardice, human weakness, powerlessness and, in the last resort, of heroism, with which you deal today in writing in this book, at that time - to real eyes and real bodies looked quite different; also, of course, because your description of Treblinka differs so startlingly from the real facts, events and story –

JEAN FRANÇOIS . . . . . . . . .

I use your Christian name because between us there is a bond - Treblinka; between you, as a writer who, after the passage of several years, tried to penetrate into it, and I, as a witness who was actually there. In reality, of course, we do not know one another, we have never met, never spoken to each another. You know nothing about me - no, that’s not quite true, you do know something: according to the epilogue of your book “one of those forty lives in Czechoslovakia’. I know a bit more about you from print. You were born in 1938 near Paris. Your Jewish father perished in a concentration camp when you were years old. After that, your Christian mother married again, this time a Jewish doctor. When you were seventeen you spent a year and a half in Israel, which was probably a very important moment in shaping the attitude you adopted later. Following your return to France you went to University and then came military service - in 1959 with a parachute regiment in Algeria. That meant that you had to toughen up your body nicely and your mind. You learnt to jump into the blue at a word of command and to shoot out a fine cadenza, like a virtuoso piano player, from a great rattling gun. No, none of us was capable of that sort of thing at your age. Moreover, you even wrote an essay on it yourself entitled “Fabrication d’un parachutiste” – “The making of a Parachutist”. By then you had already started on your career as a Journalist and as such you posed what is to you and to many other, particularly young, minds, a pressing, imponderable question: “How is it that six million Jews allowed themselves to be killed without resisting?” Indeed, in an interview you are said to have proclaimed openly; “I feel very ashamed when I realize that I am a son of a nation of which six million allowed themselves to be led to the, slaughter like a flock of sheep”. You chose the story of Treblinka and its uprising, which fascinated you - as well as it might - so as to try and produce an answer, to understand, to demonstrate that after all it was not always and everywhere quite like that, like sheep and all, that it didn’t have to be . . .

And then, how did you set about it? You interviewed about fifteen witnesses now living in Israel, read through some documentary material from Poland dating from 1945 and from Israel, as you mention yourself. Then you sat down and wrote your book.

One could argue you with over almost every page of your book. Here however, I can but select the most fundamental events and questions for confrontation with the reality. I’ll try:

Look here, according to you Max Biala or Bielas, who was the leading SS-man at an earlier stage in Treblinka’s history, and the man who was stabbed by one of the inmates, is supposed to have “nursed” a group of Jewish children, behaved gently with them, visited them to amuse them. I, myself, cannot conceivably imagine how any of the higher-ups would have dealt with this Untersturmführer - after all, this was still a non-commissioned officer rank - if he had ever come across such a thing. From the predilection which some of the SS-man had say, for fourteen-year-old Edek, or rather for his harmonica playing, when they took him to the SS-barracks, you have evolved Max Biala’s children’s playground. He was purported to be a pederast, according to your Franz-Lalka? When giving his report to the command-center in Lublin, on trying to get his former superiors and colleagues dismissed so that he could himself take complete command in Treblinka. And there we’ve come to that peach of a chap, Lalka. Very suggestively you describe his career up to the moment when he fulfills his ambition as untrammeled ruler of Treblinka and “ingenious technician in the art of killing”. It would no doubt make a strong impression on the reader that you write about a real person, calling him by his right name - who actually existed and still exists (behind bars and now sentenced to life imprisonment), if prior to that you had carried out a thorough investigation and got hold of the requisite documentary facts.

Well - Franz was indeed, in the latest period, deputy-commander of the camp, but the real commander was SS-Haupsturmführer Franz Paul Stangl, who was arrested in March 1967 in Brazil and handed over for legal proceedings to the GFR. Franz Lalka tried, no doubt he tried hard, but that he could have “ousted and taken the place” of this man, who, at the time of his arrest, was placed next on the ladder of war criminals behind Borman and Mengele?

My dear fellow, to Franz, whose original profession was that of cook somewhere in the Rhineland and who by nature was a self-satisfied never-do-well, you attribute far too great intellectual thinking and means of expression, when you put such high-fallutin speech into his mouth when speaking to those who, in contrast to you, really did get into the hands of the SS and were considered the worst kind of weed. After reading that passage in bitter mood and wry amusement, it occurred to me: How can this fellow conceivably imagine it all - that an SS-officer would actually have spoken to the Jews in Treblinka, and into the bargain, have given them his SS word of honour?

Let’s stick to the SS-men for the moment. According to you, that obsessive overseer Küttner-Kiwe, with eyes like the bayonets, of which the camp was full, and Miete, the so-called Angel of Death with the fish’s eyes, the pussyfoot - the one who swept them all up into one pile in the “Lazaret” or “hospital”, are one and the same person. Yet it was these very two, together with Franz and undoubtedly Matthes also, the commander of the Totenlagr (Death-camp: i.e. the section where the weak and feeble were taken straight away to be shot and burned, so as not to hold up the other proceedings), it was these who, maintained and kept alight the flames of Treblinka, imprinted their personality on it, together with Stangl who stood behind them and silently lashed out his orders with his riding whip in his yellow kidgloved hands.

You maintain that your legendary Franz-Lalka was the author of the idea of the maximum use of the capacity of Treblinka, that everything was arranged so that from seven in the morning transports would be shunted there uninterruptedly at half-hourly intervals until a quarter past one in the afternoon, so that the daily quota would be ticked off and twenty-four thousand people killed, and the rest of the working day, i.e. the afternoon be used for sorting out the deceased’s belongings in one part of the camp, and the removal and liquidation of the corpses in the other.

Jean François, even if our discussion is and will continue to be carried on bi-laterally in dimensions that far outstrip human imagination, it is not possible to ignore so naively the logic of reality in this way - however terrible it was. For us, the outcasts, Treblinka was truly the depths of Hell, into which we had irretrieveably fallen from the world and from life itself, but for the “technicians of death”, Treblinka was part of the world, of their world, and was bound to it in all sorts of ways. Treblinka had indeed an immense capacity. The greatest quantity we ever reckoned up was during the period of “Hochbetrieb” (when it was in top gear), in the autumn of 1942 - eighteen thousand people a day, when trainloads were being shunted to the ramp from morning to night. Yes, Treblinka was capable of this. But this dreadful shattering efficiency was limited by the shunting abilities of the railway lines of marring Germany of those years. The failure to make full use of Treblinka’s capacity lay, fortunately - if one dare even use this word at all in this connection - beyond the camp itself, beyond this scarcely one fifth of a square kilometre of land cut away from the body and history of the human universe. Otherwise, perhaps Treblinka might not have remained reserved merely for Jews, and these only from certain regions at that.

The reality was such that the transports arrived irregularly, that there were intervals of varying length. Taking the entire period of the existence of Treblinka, death worked here in gusts - in accordance with its primary elemental nature. Far the greatest harvest was in the summer and autumn of 1942 from the Warsaw ghetto, from Terezin and elsewhere, then in the January 1943 from the Soviet Union, in March from the Balkans, and then came those that remained from the Warsaw ghetto uprising; meanwhile there had been various long intervals, or transports arrived only at irregular times in “small quantities - one day two thousand, another three - or five then two weeks nothing, then a few hundred gypsies . . . Sometimes the trucks arrived in the morning, sometimes they drove us to a transport that was arriving during the noon break, sometimes before the evening roll-call. And the psychology of it all? I didn’t know much about that at the time. I only remember that when they brought in the terribly wretched little people from the eastern regions, from that periphery of the Jewish diaspora - which is how their more western brethren think of them - whips were often used against them immediately as they fell out of the crammed-full cattle-trucks. These were kind of ante-chambers of death into which they had been driven, possibly still only in their night-shirts, in bitter frost. Before a transport was admitted from Terezin, all in passenger coaches, these were left standing on a side-line in the forests outside the camp until everything inside had been completely tidied up and prepared for the “journey to the spa”. Twenty-four thousand stalwart Bulgarian, Greek and Yugoslav Jews, not suspecting a thing - or perhaps assuming they were being sent to some forced labour camp or ghetto - who had been sent off from the collecting camp at Solun almost simultaneously, one train after the other, were sorted out for liquidation in Treblinka in the course of roughly four days. I know that some of the groups of trucks stood on the tracks in the forest outside the camp overnight. In other words, the inmates could not conceivably have known or imagined-what fate they were going to, or something would have happened. No one knew and no one could humanly imagine the enormity of it all.
And what was the truth about the arrivals platform, masked to look like a small station with various signs, with a large clock, and with all the laid-out gardens and improvements throughout the camp? When I got out onto the platform from the train from Terezin on October 10, 1942, I got the impression of a large ranch, where possibly we might be going to have a work. At that time there were only two signs - “to the spa” and “to the trains to Wolkowisk” - and the brown wood-colouring of the huts, the green “fur” of the high fence made of barbed wire plaited with brushwood - nothing else. It was only when the transports stopped arriving daily at the end of the autumn 1942 and there was the period of gaps of alternative weeks and sometimes even several weeks, that they started putting up the various trimmings and improvements. From having too little of their only too ‘real’ work to do, the 33 men got going on this secondary labour, invented and made a show of activity, tending Treblinka for some sort of still unclear future. If, as you maintain, there had been an average of fifteen thousand people brought into Treblinka daily, the “technicians of death” - would not have had the time for all these sophisticated trimmings, and the total number of people liquidated in Treblinka during the fourteen months of its existence would have far exceeded all the postwar estimates, which vary from about seven hundred thousand to one million.

It was not till late in the spring, in the barren period about two months before it ceased to exist, that the large clock-face was hung up, the station was “improved” and Treblinka turned into a trap, lacquered over with a wild mixture of unnatural colours. And it was this “false face” which also combined to work as a catalyst in the decision to revolt.

Let’s turn now to the more, dead-than-alive slaves, to the grave-diggers and these bullied and forced to do the work in Treblinka, to the various important events and episodes in the overall story which came to a climax in the uprising. At this point I would like to emphasize one specific factor of Treblinka as opposed, say, to Auschwitz: - the incredibly small area of the place, namely from between 300 to 400 metres by 500 to 600 metres, also the fact that the number of “slaves” in the arrivals and undressing section of the camp in the earlier days of full pressure was about one thousand, and, at the end, shortly before the uprising, something over five hundred, and at the gas chambers, graves and firing ovens, about another two hundred. That meant that by then we all, in our respective sections of the camp, who had succeeded in surviving for over at least a certain period, mutually knew one another, we saw each other at work a great deal, and whenever anything happened during the day anywhere, at latest by the evening in the huts we were all talking about it.

I was not yet in Treblinka when Galewski, the tall aristocratic technician from Warsaw, was given the job of Lagerältester - senior Kapo. I merely sensed that for such a job the SS men had to have someone whom even they themselves, for choice, would not have liked to run up against. For Galewski was neither a great hulking brawler nor a Jewish mystic. He probably did not even speak Yiddish properly, even though he understood it. He had apparently been a member of the Jewish socialist Bund. But the most important thing about him were the characteristics which in present-day sociological terms would mark him out as a natural leading personality. Altogether, today, I am amazed how often the SS at that time, when choosing their Kapos and leading workers, would give preference to such personalities and be influenced by such characteristics. Yes, if they wanted things to run well, they had to slow down the pace of the massacre and repeated re-selection of slaves from the fresh transports, they had to retreat from their own initial absolute arbitrariness, and accept the limits set by the slaves’ exhaustion and possible even mild misdemeanours, in other words they had to stabilize the slave-labour forces and give them leaders from among their own race with some sort of authority. And it was just in this very action on the part of the “technicians of death” that lay one of the roots of their own destruction, not some sort of mystic acquisition of courage on the part of the slaves - as might be deduced, Jean Francois, from you.

Who was this Adolf Friedman of yours, with his blue-green eyes and tough face, with a past in the Foreign Legion, who was apparently one of the main military organizers and agents of the uprising in Treblinka? By the fact that, together with our Zhelo Bloch, he was a Vorarbeiter or foreman of one of the Kommandos and then, as a punishment, was “sent behind the wall to the Totenlager”, I assume that it was probably Adash. I can see him clearly, lying there opposite on the bunk and up there in the hut with the “ready mades”, the clothes left behind” by victims, where I worked to begin with. Surprisingly enough, still fairly plump, with a shiny bald head. He was quite a chap, but completely non-military, a suave politician and a fatherly Vorarbeiter.

Zhelo Bloch, another outstanding person in Treblinka and in the preparations for the uprising, did not arrive as late as April 1943 when the typhus epidemic was subsiding. He came in October 1942, shortly after our arrival. He came from Slovakia, from Prešov. Indeed, he was one of those that all the others looked up to. I slept in one bunk with him, I was in his gang, where we divided every single crumb, I worked with him, in fact under him. Together with Galewski and the others he helped to plan assault action as early as January 1943. First of all this was delayed by spotted typhus and then, shortly before the action was actually to take place, Küttner-Kiwe sent Zhelo and Adash as a punishment to be ordinary workers in the neighbouring Totenlager. I know exactly how it was, as I was there when it happened. Among the clothes left behind by those destroyed, for which these two, as Vorarbeiter, were responsible, a certain quantity of men’s coats were missing. There were many pointers indicating that these had been taken by the SS as an excuse, for they suspected something or possibly even knew something. But you, my friend, have made up your own legend about this event, namely that the two went over to the Totenlager on purpose, that they framed the thing so that Kiwe would send them there as a punishment. In your opinion, then, they decided to enter very Hell itself, where the naked bodies were burned, so as to carry the idea and preparations for the uprising there as well. In reality the uprising was threatened and postponed by this shifting of these two as a punishment.

I must call attention to still another statement of yours concerning Zhelo. Apparently he could not have been recognized among the real Jews as the main figure in the preparations for the uprising, because he was an “assimilated” Jew, one of those who was only waiting for the decease of the last “anti-Semite” in order to cease to be a Jew altogether. Don’t you get this idea more from J.P. Sartre than from Treblinka? And there’s another place in your book which sounds as though this same thinker is literally speaking the words himself. Doctor Choronzycki, another tragic figure in the uprising, presents a report to the revolutionary committee about how he has negotiated with a certain member of the Ukrainian group of the auxiliary SS in Treblinka, wanting to bribe him, to buy weapons from him - and you describe him as a person “to whom we Jews were part of the Manicheistic balance of the world”. But, above all, I read as absolute nonsense to an inmate of Treblinka that Choronzycki decided to confide in him at all and told him that an uprising was being planned.

When they found a lot of money hidden by Choronzycki and he breathed his last, they then began to interrogate the so-called “gold-Juden”, those put in charge of sorting out the jewellery and valuables left by the victims, because they suspected that the money reached him secretly from them. Your entire fabrication, Jean Francois, about the sacrificing of the “gold-Juden” how Kiwe had them thrown one by one alive into the fire, and old Alexandr, their Kapo, just looked on - and of the sinking to the darkest depths of cowardice in the interests of the uprising and of life, is again completely phoney. I remember it exactly: Lalka took up his place above the “Lazaret” pit, and during the course of the interrogation walked from one prisoner to the other holding his revolver to the napes of their necks. They stood there beside one another, naked, “faithful” Jews from Warsaw, assimilated Jews – Willie Furst and Salo Sauer – from Morovia Ostrava, and betrayed nothing. Finally, Lalka let them go, as they were specially trained slaves, transport were not arriving and where would he find such people at a moment’s notice and work them into a job. That was what one of the victorious actions taken by outcasts in Treblinka really looked like.

Your Vorarbeiter Kleinman, with his camouflage Kommando Tarnung, who was entrusted with special tasks in the event of an uprising, was not a twenty-year-old youngster who had gone through the tough school of a Zionist youth. On the contrary, even here Treblinka revealed its nonsencial antitheses it was a staid father of a bourgeois family, a polite conscientious official, who became our Vorarbeiter, who was put in charge of us, a group of adventurous cheaters, rough and toughened ‘smugglers’, so-called because we at least got outside the camp and incidentally had the chance of smuggling things in. I speak of ‘us’, because at this time I was with Karl Unger in the Tarnung Kommando, we were by then making regular trips from the camp into the forest to cut branches for camouflaging the fences. I can see Heinrich Kleinman puffing along, bespectacled, beside us, when it began that Monday. That’s how one of the real people in Treblinka appeared at that moment, not as in your novel. And he would laughed today at the naïve way you, in your book, let him and his gang, working outside the camp, know that the uprising had been called off: -namely, that the ‘court Jew’ Monek gives the Ukrainian auxiliary SS a false order, the latter believes him and himself leads the Jew out of the camp together with the message to us at the Tarnung Kommando post! That all of a sudden Treblinka should be so feebly isolated from life and from the world? This was unthinkable. None of us outcasts, and not even any of the Ukrainian guards on duty could have gone trough the gates of the Camp without being constantly watched by the real SS.

That so-called ‘court Jews’ lived with their wives and children in rooms separated off from the others? I only know of two exceptions to the general rule of families being separated, two curiosities in Treblinka – old Blau from Vienna with his wife, who knew as little about the uprising as those to whom he told tales, and Salzberg and his son – on the other hand, they knew . . . . but I just don’t understand the concept of a room to live in, however, in association with Treblinka at all.

I also know of no case where a small boy got down from one of the cattle-trucks, recognized his father among the slaves in Treblinka and, on expressing his delight at seeing him again, the father “cowardishly” remarks: “ . . . . but first you must go and have a bath . . . .” and hurries away from the boy carrying his pack on his back.

And, as you bring your story of Treblinka to a climax on the basis of real monstrous happenings, so you compose and play around with monstrosities of your own making and support them with “plausible episodes”. In place of the show organized by Lalka on the roll-call yard one Sunday afternoon some weeks before the uprising, according to you diversions and pastimes were arranged every day of the week after work. The SS men come and have fun with the Jews each evening, and the following day kill them, the Ukrainians take the girls in bright-coloured skirts behind the fence. You dress the outcasts in tails and evening dresses taken from the clothes that remained after the transports had been disposed of, there’s feasting and drinking – all that’s missing are the orgies – and you have even those: apparently the sight of vast quantities of naked dead bodies and destruction all round provoked the senses, women walked naked down to the waist, and in the laundry where they worked, they were completely naked, all that was missing from the huts they slept in was a red lantern . . . . Jean François, I can answer for myself and for Karl Unger, for two bodies with but a single soul: during the whole period in Treblinka and for a long time afterwards, we, at the age of twenty-two - twenty-three, did not know that we were men!
I have left the most heinous falsehood and invention, one that in itself alone must make all the clenched fists of the inmates of Treblinka rise up against you, to the last. According to you, Kapo Kurland literally murdered people himself at the “Lazaret”; he would thrust a deadly injection into people incapable of walking fast enough to the “baths”, just as they arrived direct from the arrival platform. He would pretend that these were fortifying injections, while doing so he would smile and say: “That’s nothing, better already, eh?” At this point I would like to tell you what two other inmates of Treblinka wrote to me from Canada about your book: - Samek Reizman from Montreal: “This terrible book prevented me from sleeping for many a long night” and Karel Unger from Vancouver: “that man must be repudiated . . . . .” And as for myself, I can only add that I know of no case where one of the outcasts . . . . a slave worker in Treblinka, caused the death of one of his brethren. And as for Kapo Kurland, with the springy wire spectacles and the sunken cheeks darkly tanned from the burning of the naked bodies? Among the prisoners he enjoyed the respect of a philosopher dealing with lives that had already been given the finishing touch, lives which were struck down and thrown to him in the Lazaret pit by none but the SS men, who in this matter shared none of this privilege of theirs with any one, not even with the Ukrainian guards. Kurland was also a personality from whom we others used to await the expression of what we vaguely sensed deep down ourselves. It was to him as a senior member of the revolutionary committee, that the prisoners swore an oath on the eave of the uprising. In what sense he the great figure of the uprising? He was one of the main instigators of the profound changes which had to take place in the consciousness of these people, to whom the Lord alone was their shield, their sword, and if He was not watching over the City, then the guard would be on guard in vain; changes, to us twenty souls from Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia, in former life from such differing fraternities, which long remained a mystery in Treblinka.

The uprising itself has left a less heroic picture in my mind than depicted in your book, - possibly to the disillusionment of your readers and yourself. Naturally, in the first moments, it was as joyful as you make it out, something which nothing and nobody could hold back; grenades and bottles of petrol were exploding, guns taken from Ukrainian guards were being fired, and then the petrol tank blew up. After that there was utter confusion – you should have seen us the way we all got tangled up, how we knew not where and in which direction to go, and they were firing to us. Then Lublink, the orderly ran up and drove one group in front of him to escape, he had only some sort of cane in his hand and he swished it about in front of him as though he were driving a flock of geese. No one got as far as the guard towers standing right out in the outer field; it was senseless anyway. Look here, so few people survived, no one – possibly not even the SS – can really say what actually happened in those moments in the various parts of the camp . . . . It would be easy for me to leave it at that, pass on, hold my peace, and we from Tarnung would emerge from your book as special heroes, who shot their way right through to the woods; yet of those, only four of us are alive today – perhaps one in Belgium, one in Poland, one in the U.S.A. and one in Czechoslovakia. And in reality? Of the twenty-five strong Tarnung Kommando, perhaps six, possibly eight of us got to the end of the outer field and across the barbed wire fence with its anti-tank barricades.

The only real heroes, I guess, were those (almost all of them had lost their wives and children in Treblinka) who remained and, clearly purposely, enabled the others to escape, “so that at least someone might possibly live to bear witness”. Apart from Galewski, the camp elder, Kapo Kurland, Sidowicz and Simche from the carpentering shop, naturally those I remember best were members of the Czech group in the camp: - Zhelo Bloch, Rudla Masárek from Prague, who did tailoring in the workshop and at the same time looked after the dovecote so that the grenades could be hidden there, Standa Lichtbau from Moravia and Sstrava, who was an expert was put in charge of the garage and was responsible for the petrol and the petrol tank. The outstanding person in your uprising, Rudek, from the garage, my friend, was presumably a compound of these two figures . . . . . . . if you so desire to understand -

why didn’t you seek out all or at least the majority of those who survived Treblinka? There are only forty of them in the whole world. You could easily have found many of them at the Court in Düsseldorf. The trial of the former members of the SS-Sonderkommando of Treblinka, was held there from 1964 on. Apart from the witnesses who survived, the accused also naturally gave testimony. The preliminary investigations began sometime as early as 1961. The entire world’s press carried reports of the case; Paris Match also published an extensive article. Your book was published in the Spring of 1966. That means that you were preparing it for printing in its final form in 1965. Jean François, how is it possible that you, a professional journalist, could miss such important information about the theme of your labours and your own personal problem?

I think I have an explanation as to how it happened. At very first acquaintance and with the first stories you gathered, you discovered a sensational pattern and thesis: - They sank to the lowest depths of cowardice, became collaborators with the “technicians of death”, fellow-criminals; each of them, so as to survive one day in Treblinka, paid, figuratively speaking, the daily sum of the lives of fifteen others, of fifteen of his brothers and sisters - all this in the interests of a so-called Jewish philosophy of life and the courage to survive at any price. Finally they rose in the famous uprising, which proved to be a kind of sacred rectification of their initial lamentable actions, and this entire philosophy; some, mainly the leading figures in the uprising, had relinquished their sense of humanity to such a degree, that they could only acquire it again by giving their own lives and sacrificing themselves - they knew that for them there was no road away from Treblinka. This immense literary concoction took hold of you, you no longer wished to hear any more about the reality of Treblinka, you no longer took in any more details. You reconciled all the time factors and, in fact, rearranged invented, added things and “produced” the story, so that it would fit into your own preconceived pattern, which was probably instilled into you not only by Treblinka, but by the climate in which you yourself lived and grew up. I infer this from the mixture of mysticism, nationalism, and the fashionable dry cynicism which you employ in the book in order to pay “your daily pension”. You no doubt have a right to your elaboration, to your own “produced narration”, but in that case it should not have been called the story of Treblinka, but a tale “about an extermination camp”. You should not have written such sensation-mongering, cruel concoctions about real people, using their real names, which really existed not so long ago and are remembered, so that their nearest and dearest would have the right to bring you to bear witness before the public - if any of them had lived or had had sufficient money to do so. With the exception of the three informers who were isolated from the uprising, none of the prisoners of Treblinka sank so low that - as they sing in your hymn – “they completely adapted themselves to Treblinka and could never return from there”.

My friend, you made an attempt to “write yourself out” of your own shame, to find yourself an answer as to how it could possibly have happened. If you did in fact rid yourself in this way of one shame, you certainly burdened yourself with another, of which - in the eyes of those that survived Treblinka - you will never be free. They would know of another experiment for you, a test - which needless to say should never be allowed to happen again - “never again” - nikdy vice - nigdy wiecej - jamais plus” as is inscribed on the ashlar of the mighty monument at Treblinka. You would be standing there with the others, naked, suddenly in the confusion they would tell you to dress again quickly, quickly . . . . Then they would lead you over to us, the “slaves”. “Look sharp now, here’s your foreman, you’ll work here!” You’d look round perplexed dazed. While running past you with our packs on our backs - we’re not allowed to stop for a moment - we would take a peep at you curiously, cast understanding glances at one another. Meanwhile we’ve been telling you three or four times, shouted it at you feverishly - that the others are dead already - and you don’t, you just can’t believe it - you look just the way we did then, like everyone else . . . . you’re just like us, no different - and we’re no different from you - all people are like that. And that’s how you become one of the more dead-than-alive slaves of Treblinka.
Cowardice, shame, bravery? These concepts had different content in Treblinka and “out there in real life”. The older ones of us often spoke about this - that it was this very difference that the world never comprehend. Yes, I also sometimes have the unpleasant feeling that I let those dear to me go to the slaughter ‘just like that’. But that is how I feel today, when I can choose coffee or tea for breakfast, jam or marmalade, rolls or bread. But during those twenty-five years since Treblinka I have also experienced much sorrowful, disturbing ‘satisfaction’ when I have been witness to cowardly behavior under conditions which are completely dwarfed by the dimensions of Treblinka. And as for you, today, Jean, I know of another type of terrible human cowardice and weakness, namely when a person is unable to admit that his ideas fail to stand up to reality.

One day, when more thorough, truthful people than you will immerse themselves in the story of Treblinka, they will not let themselves be carried away by a tale in which the suffering of the time prior to, during and after Treblinka is somehow discounted, when they will separate out the legend from the truth and suppress the eruptions welling up from individual fantasy, it will probably turn out that you – I’m sure unconsciously – have contributed more to the forces of evil that of good. You know what I refer to; - “There you are, how exaggerated it all is, it was really nothing like that . . . . ” Meanwhile, by a strange reversal of values, it is right to attribute one good thing to you, namely that you at least drew the attention of part of the world – a world in a hurry, and wearied by all the great goings-on – to an almost forgotten Treblinka.