Nov 1942 Treblinka Report, Ringelblum (the "Steam Chamber" report)

[PrudentRegret]

Talking to SanityCheck in the original Treblinka delousing chamber thread, he was motivated to downplay the involvement of ZBL Warsaw in the construction of T-II even though there is far more evidence attesting to their planning and involvement in the construction of the camp than the firms cited elsewhere. The involvement of ZBL Warsaw in T-II undermines the entire narrative regarding the development and purpose of the camp, which was supposed to be a solo SSPF Lublin operation outside the jurisdiction of SSPF Warsaw but it clearly was not.

[pilgrimofdark]

Emanuel Ringelblum himself was possibly transited through Treblinka.

He helped edit the "Liquidation of Warsaw Jewry" report that contained the "Treblinka" steam chambers account. It states that 300,000 Warsaw Jews and 1,000,000 Jews from the General Government were deported to Treblinka. No other deportation routes are mentioned out of Warsaw.

Instead of facing deportation, Ringelblum escaped the Warsaw Ghetto to the Aryan side, but was eventually caught and sent to... the Trawniki labor camp.

Then the Polish Home Army helped him escape after 4 months. He went back to the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto and lived in an underground bunker with nearly 40 people.

The Polish government-in-exile offered to rescue him a third time with assistance from the Home Army, but Ringelblum refused so he could "fulfill my duty to society."

A Jew informed the Germans about the bunker in March 1944, and the inhabitants were imprisoned and executed.

Most of the info was pulled from these three sources:

• YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe
• The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City
• Poland's Holocaust

I don't think it's conclusive Ringelblum was sent out of Warsaw to Treblinka via Warsaw-Malkinia-Treblinka-Lublin-Trawniki, but his own report on the Warsaw deportations only mentions Warsaw-Malkinia-Treblinka, no other route.

[Archie]

A point about this bit at the very end,

The new death-house provides for the liquidation of 8,000 to 10,000 victims. If we consider that right now 2,000,000 murdered Jews, or the greater part of Polish Jewry, are already buried in the area of Treblinka, the disturbing question arises: for whom do the S.S. intend that new house of death; who are to utter their last breath in the slaughter-house? Most probably the death machine, once started, will not limit itself to murdering Jews. At present, the specter of death in steam chambers rises before the Polish population; there have already been some signs of it: according to a report of an eyewitness, the Germans exterminated a group of Poles in death house No.1, in the second half of August.

If the smaller "death house" had been sufficient to kill 2,000,000 people, it is hard to see the logic in building a larger "death house." The propagandists suggest that this larger death house was being built in order to steam, ahem, gas Gentile Poles, presumably many millions of them. As this was sent to London, I would bet the intention here was to rile up the Poles.

For a bit of context on these two gas chamber buildings,

Arad (Ch 17) says, "Construction on the new gas chambers began in early September." Later he says, "With the inauguration of the new gas chambers, in the middle of October 1942, the old ones ceased to function."

Wiernik claims he helped build the second gas chamber building, and says it took five weeks: "The work on these gas-chambers lasted five weeks, which, to us, seemed like centuries. We had to work from dawn to dusk under the ceaseless threat of beatings with whips and rifle butts."

The modern version of the story of course rejects this 2,000,000 number. But the numbers still don't fit that well with the timeline of the gas chamber construction.

Here are some rough numbers (from Dalton's death matrix)
Jul: 175K
Aug: 135K
Sep: 165K
Oct: 185K
Nov: 100K
Dec: 40K
Total 1942: 800K
And he has another 100K for all of 1943 without any monthly split.

By mid-October, most of the killing would have been done with, so there would not have been much point in building this second gassing building. Unless you were planning on gassing a bunch of Gentile Poles which is not longer claimed.

[pilgrimofdark]

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, but Władysław Szlengel wrote a poem in December 1942 about Treblinka, immortalizing the steam chambers.

It was unearthed in the second part of the Ringelblum Archive documents (the milk cans).

"It Is Time"

And when the killers will have pushed you and forced you
And dragged, stuffed you into the steam chamber
And sealed the hatch behind you,
The hot steam will begin to suffocate you, to suffocate you,
And you will scream, you will try to run
And after the torture of dying will have stopped,
Then they will drag you out and throw you in a horrible pit;
They will put your stars out—the gold teeth in your jaw
And you will turn into ashes.

- translated in Samuel Kassow, Who will write our history? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive

And there's a different translation of the entire poem on the Manhattan Review that is more interesting:

For torture in the ghetto and the specter of the gallows,
For death in Treblinka, bent under the whip,
We the degraded, we the exhausted,
We will pay You back! We will pay You back!
You will no longer escape Your end ——
When we bring You to the place of execution
You won’t be able to bribe the guardian of the showers
With a shining, hundred-dollar gold piece of the sun.
And when the executioner prods You forward,
Drives and crams You into the steam chamber
Sealing the hermetic lid behind You,
The hot steam will begin to suffocate, suffocate
And You will cry out, You will want to flee.
When the torture is finished and the agony of death
They will drag You and cast You into a hideous pit,
They will tear away Your stars —— the gold teeth in Your jaw ——
Then burn You.
And You will be ash.

- Source

It's not explicit if the "hermetic lid" / "hatch" is referring to a doorway or ceiling, but "hermetic lid" is reminiscent of the Wiernik Writers Group's three-person draft that mentions a ceiling cap for chlorine poisonings. That's also echoed in Abram Goldfarb's book report to the Soviets. Krzepicki's shorter account mentions a scent of chlorine, but no hatch/lid.

Also, the Manhattan Review version makes it clear that this is a revenge fantasy. What the author has in mind for the Germans is pushing them into the steam chambers of Treblinka.

So this would have been soon after the November Report on the "Liquidation of Warsaw Jewry" that included the section on "Treblinka" with the steam chamber and electricity-generating diesel engine. And before Auerbach began writing the Krzepicki account in her notebooks.