Extermination Camp | Treblinka by Vasili Grossman
Operation of the extermination camp - Treblinka
The Treblinka extermination camp was one of the centers that caused the most deaths during World War II. In this video the writer Vasili Grossman's account of the camp, and the system of operation of this type of centers, is recovered.
Excerpts from "The Hell of Treblinka", by Vasili Grossman
*About the images shown
The Treblinka camp was dismantled in 1943, we have hardly any actual images of this extermination camp. The images shown to accompany the story are from well-known films such as Schindler's List or The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The images shown between minute 8:32 and 9:21 correspond to what is known as 'The Auschwitz Album'. The photographs were taken in late May and early June 1944 by Ernst Hofmann and Bernhard Walter, two SS men whose job was to take identifying photos and fingerprints of prisoners (not of Jews who were sent directly to the gas chambers). The photographs show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia. Many of them came from the Berehov ghetto, which gathered Jews from other small towns. The photos in the album show the entire process, except for the murders themselves. For more information: https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/es/exhib...
The purpose of the album is unclear. It was not intended for propaganda purposes, nor is there any indication of any personal use.
It is assumed that it was prepared as an official document for some higher authority, as was the case with photo albums from other concentration camps.
To the east of Warsaw, along the Bug River, there are sandbanks, marshes and land covered with thick forests of pine and foliaceous trees. They are sparsely populated and sad places. The land there is greedy and unproductive and the peasants did not cultivate it, that is why the land remained barren since time immemorial. This miserable wilderness was chosen and accepted by the SS führer of Germany, Heinrich Himmler, for the construction of an immense scaffold. Here was built the main SS slaughterhouse, which surpassed in dimensions those of Sobibor, Maidánek, Belzec and Auschwitz.
[...]
The wide doors opened slowly and two assistants of Schmidt, head of the death building, appeared at the entrance. The taller one held in his hand a thick, meter-long gas pipe and a whip; the second one was armed with a saber.
At that moment the SS unleashed trained dogs, which rushed into the crowd and sunk their teeth into the naked bodies of the condemned. The SS, with savage cries, with blows of the butts, herded the terrified women who remained petrified.
Inside the building Schmidt's assistants acted, pushing the people towards the open doors of the gas chamber.
The asphyxiation process in the chamber lasted between ten and twenty-five minutes. At the beginning, when the new chambers were put into operation and the executioners, not having been able to fine-tune their system, carried out tests for the dosage of various poisonous substances, the victims underwent terrible martyrdoms, preserving their lives for two to three hours.
And finally came the last act of human tragedy; man crossed the last circle of Treblinka's hell. The doors of the concrete chamber were closed tightly. All kinds of perfected locking devices: strong bolts, locks and latches, held these doors. They could not be torn off.
No, you can't imagine what was going on in the chamber! The dead bodies remained standing as they cooled little by little.
[...]
Today it is not enough to talk about Germany's responsibility. Today it is necessary to speak of responsibility for the future of all peoples and all citizens of the world.
Today every person is obliged before his conscience, before his son and before his mother, before the fatherland and before humanity to answer with all the strength of his soul and his intelligence the question of who gave birth to racism, what is necessary so that Nazism will not be resurrected anywhere, neither on this side of the ocean nor on the other side of the ocean, never for ever and ever.
The imperialist idea of nationality, race and any other exclusivism logically led to the construction of Sobibor, Belzec, Auschwitz, Treblinka....
This must be daily and severely remembered by everyone who cherishes honor, freedom, life of all peoples, of all mankind.
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