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.

[pilgrimofdark]

So was Krzepicki the main source for that report? He couldn't be, because his description of the steam chambers was too different. But if not him, then who?

Not sure. It's possible Auerbach was assigned to write Krzepicki's account as a "secret brochure" to accompany the November 1942 report. The maps could be to orient the writer, not the intended readers. But she didn't complete it in time, and Krzepicki was superseded by the Wiernik "secret brochure" that included the 1942 report's map.

These are maps of Treblinka contained in the Ringelblum Archive documents. There are also a handful of rough sketches said to be of Treblinka that I didn't include.

After September 1942 to March 1943. Krzepicki. Left: attached to the Yiddish Auerbach testimony. Right: attached to the two-person Polish testimony.

Spoiler

After September 1942. Unknown Częstochowa resident.

Spoiler

Late 1942. Author unknown.

Spoiler

Late 1942. Author unknown.

Spoiler

November 1942. Left: from the Oyneg Shabes "Steam Chamber" report. Right: map included with Wiernik's book.

Spoiler

Auerbach's Krzepicki sketch is done on graphing paper, as you can see the grid outline. It could have been done before or after the Polish version, but her map was likely drawn after. It may be unfinished, indicated by the three lines in the bottom left of the map.

The Częstochowa resident map is the most detailed, but lacks any indication of gas chambers. Just a "path to execution" with no endpoint of the path. Other than functional camp buildings (barracks, kitchen, garage), the camp's purpose is conveyed as digging up sand and sorting/cleaning/burning property.

By the "late 1942" maps, there seems to be a concretization of the layout. These maps don't include as much detail of the rest of the camp -- the barracks/kitchen/zoo/garage, the piles of property and sorting/burning area, the sand excavation pits. By late/November 1942, the camp is presented as pure extermination.

[Wetzelrad]

So was Krzepicki the main source for that report? He couldn't be, because his description of the steam chambers was too different. But if not him, then who?

Not sure. It's possible Auerbach was assigned to write Krzepicki's account as a "secret brochure" to accompany the November 1942 report. The maps could be to orient the writer, not the intended readers. But she didn't complete it in time, and Krzepicki was superseded by the Wiernik "secret brochure" that included the 1942 report's map.

Anonymity is the lynchpin. The November 1942 report had to have been written in part by a 1942 escapee. Someone with a name. But of the 1942 escapees we know who reported their knowledge (Abraham Krzepicki, Oskar Berger, Jakob Rabinowicz, Dawid Nowodwoski, and the Częstochowa resident), none of them knew about three, ten, or thirteen gas chambers. Likewise, of the other anonymous reports preceding this, none of them knew how many gas chambers there were.

After the November 1942 report was published in 1943, many subsequent reports and witnesses parroted its claim of thirteen gas chambers. It has been treated ever since as an established fact.

Now unless someone can show me the "eyewitness" who provided this information to the Ringelblum group, I am forced to conclude it was their invention.

Your hypothesis seems as valid as any other. I would like to suggest the possibility that Wiernik wrote it, despite the anachronisms that requires. Wiernik at least would qualify as an eyewitness to the thirteen gas chambers.

These are maps of Treblinka contained in the Ringelblum Archive documents. There are also a handful of rough sketches said to be of Treblinka that I didn't include.

All of these are very interesting, thanks. Hopefully they become available in higher resolution in the future.

Another map by an "unknown Częstochowa resident" has a rare camp layout lacking gas chambers at all but highly detailed in other respects. On that map, the purpose of the camp seems to be excavating sand and property sorting.

After September 1942. Unknown Częstochowa resident.

Spoiler

I guess the writer of this account meant to imply that there were executions going on without expressing close personal knowledge of the gas chambers. The sand excavations are surely meant to be his representation of mass graves. Still, it's true that this map is dominated by property sorting. He drew the piles of clothes approximately where the gas chambers and related structures were supposed to be.

It is also interesting that he drew two wells at #20 and #25. These would be separate from the well in the extermination zone, which according to the November 1942 report was "the only well" in camp. That well also played an important role in Wiernik's story, a role it couldn't have played if there were two other wells. So this one map majorly contradicts the two most important reports on Treblinka.

[pilgrimofdark]

The other RA eyewitnesses don't mention anything specific about the muder method.

• Częstochowan: "death chamber" / "torment"
• Polish Krzepicki: bathhouse smelling of chlorine
• Nowodworski: "torment -- lying in a row" / "bath at about 4 o'clock"
• Rabinowicz: *unfinished sentence*

The November 1942 report states it's based on "dozens of survivors" and was written by two doctors of history and an accountant -- the highest-ranking members of the Oyneg Shabes group.

But no single eyewitness whose account has survived includes details upon which the report could have been based.

Now unless someone can show me the "eyewitness" who provided this information to the Ringelblum group, I am forced to conclude it was their invention.

I would like to suggest the possibility that Wiernik wrote it, despite the anachronisms that requires. Wiernik at least would qualify as an eyewitness to the thirteen gas chambers.

I'm willing to push this into wild speculation territory and follow an opposite direction.

Supported in the literature:

Oyneg Shabes is preparing the November 1942 report, creating/repeating unsubstantiated rumors. They assign Auerbach to expand Krzepicki's account with the intent to publish as a "secret brochure."

She writes the draft, but it's never completed for publishing. Some details never align with the November report.

Events overtake the project -- second deportation aktion in January, Ringelblum leaves ghetto in February, Auerbach leaves in March, Krzecpiki dies in the ghetto uprising in April.

Not supported (yet):

Auerbach, still working with the remnants of Oyneg Shabes and the Jewish-Polish underground on the Aryan side, makes the Krzepicki material available.

Using it as a base, Krzepicki is rewritten in 1944 and extended with the new rumors/information -- Katyn, Himmler visit, mass cremations, revolt.

Instead of Krzepicki the Jewish anti-German resistance fighter, the repurposed account is attributed to Wiernik the Jewish anti-German communist propagandist.

(There are only tenuous links so far between Auerbach, Wiernik, the Bermans, Zegota, etc. So this is all a hypothesis where details would need to be filled in, if they even exist.)

Supported again:

By August 1944, the Soviets have a copy of Wiernik's book and have translated it into Russian. They use it extensively during their August-September investigations at Treblinka. Numerous witnesses remember highly-specific details from Wiernik's book, whether accurately or in somewhat degraded form.

Key Questions

When did the 10-chamber building first appear? In the November 1942 report?

It was supposedly completed near the end or after the Great Deportation of Warsaw's Jews (attributing murder of 2 million Jews to the 3-chamber building). In a couple reports, the stated purpose was extending the mass murder to non-Jewish Poles.

Disclaimer: I'm taking all these accounts at face value to evaluate the development/spread of the information. If someone's argument is none of this happened, so it doesn't matter, that's just a different topic. I generally also don't like using "irony quotes" because then it's unclear what is irony and what is an actual quote from a source.

[Wetzelrad]

The November 1942 report states it's based on "dozens of survivors" and was written by two doctors of history and an accountant -- the highest-ranking members of the Oyneg Shabes group.

Is that a real quote? I was unaware of this detail. They already had 24+ Treblinka escapees by November 1942? And not just escaped, but all collaborating in this writing effort in Warsaw? Hard to believe.

But no single eyewitness whose account has survived includes details upon which the report could have been based.

This is the essential point to make, and I think it stands quite well on its own even if we fail to work out the rest.

When did the 10-chamber building first appear? In the November 1942 report?

Yes. Nothing else even comes close to three, ten, or thirteen gas chambers before the November 1942 report. After it, those numbers don't appear again until Wiernik's various publications, and they don't really take off until his book in May 1944.

However, that is what I gather mostly by Mattogno and Graf's book. With the wide array of sources out there it's very possible that I'm missing some things.

[pilgrimofdark]

The November 1942 report states it's based on "dozens of survivors" and was written by two doctors of history and an accountant -- the highest-ranking members of the Oyneg Shabes group.

Is that a real quote? I was unaware of this detail. They already had 24+ Treblinka escapees by November 1942? And not just escaped, but all collaborating in this writing effort in Warsaw? Hard to believe.

Yes. This is from the Ringelblum Archive official English translation of "Liquidation of Jewish Warsaw," which is the November 1942 report. The second section of the report is "Treblinka" with the map, "death house," steam chambers," etc. The above quote is from the first section that's mostly about the July-September deportation.

The book used to be online, but the JHI archive has been "migrating data to a new digital repository" for several months now. Lucky I grabbed screenshots of the books, which is also where the maps came from.

Spoiler

Google Translate gives "Dozens of people saved from this gigantic torture camp recount their tragic experiences."

Tracking the November report's rumor transmission a step further, a press article in Glos Warszaway might be the first to mention the 10 chambers of "house of death no. 2." It's also in the Ringelblum Archive, and dated as "After November 1942."

Mattogno quotes part of it in TORC HH#28 and mentions that Glos Warszaway was the "organ of the Warsaw Committee of the Polish Workers' Party," the Soviet-controlled communist party.

Sometimes I don't think Mattogno sufficiently highlights how you can't go one step without tripping over a communist partisan. From The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939–1945: "The most important development was the formation of the Polish Worker’s Party (PPR) in January 1942, a rival communist underground loyal to Moscow. Its establishment of the PPR can be traced back to two Polish communists in Moscow who were parachuted into German-occupied Poland on the night of December 27/28, 1941."

Features:

• house of death no. 1 -- masonry windowless building, 3 chambers, boiler room
• house of death no. 2 -- 4 times larger, 10 chambers, unfinished in September
• 2 million victims
• commandant named Sauer
• reports mass deportation of Poles from Lublin and Zamosc

[Archie]

The November 1942 report states it's based on "dozens of survivors" and was written by two doctors of history and an accountant -- the highest-ranking members of the Oyneg Shabes group.

But no single eyewitness whose account has survived includes details upon which the report could have been based.

It is worth noting that they do seem to have compiled (or received) some legit intel about Treblinka. They know there was a Treblinka I and II, for example (A and B in the report). They accidentally admit that a diesel generator was used to power the camp. I think the most likely scenario is that they compiled some intel on the camp by a range of means and to this kernel of real intel they added a thick layer of fantasy.

It seems they like to attribute info about the camps to miraculous escapes (see also the WRB report) but this would not be the only or even the most likely source of info. There are a couple examples from Belzec that spring to mind here but I think the points raised would could also apply to Treblinka.

Jews arrived in Belzec [the township] looking for a witness who would testify that Jews are being killed there. They were ready to pay 120,000 zloty.... They did not find a volunteer.... It is unknown by which means the Jews are liquidated in the camp. (Delegatura report of 17 Mar 1942, quoted in Arad, Ch 44, pg. 401)

I suspect it is true that Jews were actively gathering intel rather than simply waiting for escapees to come back to the ghetto. There's also this interesting bit from Jan Karski's The Story of a Secret State, published in 1944.

A few days after my second visit to the Warsaw ghetto, the Bund leader was to arrange an opportunity for me to see the Jewish death camp.

The camp was located near the town of Belzec about one hundred miles east of Warsaw and was well-known all over Poland from the tales of horror that were circulated about it. The common report was that every Jew who reached it, without exception, was doomed to death. The Bund leader had never been in it but had the most detailed information in its operations.

I was to go on a day when executions were scheduled. The information was easy to obtain because many of the Estonian, Latvian, and Ukrainian attendants who worked there under Gestapo supervision were in the service of Jewish organizations. Not from any humane or political consideration, but for money. I was to wear the uniform of one of the Estonians who would stay home while I went in with his papers. (pg. 330)

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dl ... 7/mode/2up

We cannot take what Karski says as gospel, but the idea of trying to get info from the guards (by bribing or other means) sounds quite believable to me. I don't see why you couldn't at least try to do that. Karski arrived in London in December 1942 and was reportedly in the Warsaw ghetto in August and September. And that Delegatura report indicates mass murder rumors at Belzec had begun in March. It seems that by summer and fall of 1942 the Jews should have been very much on their guard with Treblinka and would have been able to figure out exactly what was going on without having to make up a bunch of nonsense.

One thing I have noticed with the Ringelblum material is that they don't seem to have been very concerned with preserving the integrity of the individual accounts.

Of course with intel gathering, generally you don't want to disclose the true source of the information. The real intel may well have come from outside the group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[Archie]

When did the 10-chamber building first appear? In the November 1942 report?

Yes. Nothing else even comes close to three, ten, or thirteen gas chambers before the November 1942 report. After it, those numbers don't appear again until Wiernik's various publications, and they don't really take off until his book in May 1944.

However, that is what I gather mostly by Mattogno and Graf's book. With the wide array of sources out there it's very possible that I'm missing some things.

Wiernik's description of the 10 chambers in a 5x2 layout follows the Nov 1942 report very closely (minus the steam-related stuff). This is found both in the text and in the maps of both sources. Interestingly, since the current official story essentially derives from Wiernik and Wiernik is so similar to the Nov 1942 report, this forces the establishment to defend the Nov 1942 report because there's is no way to explain how they nailed it on the layout while simultaneously bungling the steam/engine exhaust thing.

If you think about it, it would actually have been better for the establishment if the Nov 1942 report had just been off-the-wall wrong since then it could simply be dismissed as hearsay. This is related to what I referred to in another post as the "case 3" witness problem.
viewtopic.php?p=23095#p23095

I'll add that Hoess also repeats the 10 chambers in his affidavit (PS-3868).

Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each.

In the secondary literature, I believer the exact number is not quite agreed upon. Gerstein claims 8 chambers. I think some sources may claim 6. But given that Wiernik personally claims to have built these gas chambers, you would think he would get it right.

[Archie]

The November 1942 report states it's based on "dozens of survivors" and was written by two doctors of history and an accountant -- the highest-ranking members of the Oyneg Shabes group.

But no single eyewitness whose account has survived includes details upon which the report could have been based.

Just to add further, the "scenes" described in the final report make ZERO sense as first-person accounts based on real experience.

Like here where we get a play-by-play of the gassing from the interior of the chamber.

The people finally realize that they are going to their death. At the entrance of death-house No.1 the chief himself stands, a whip in his hand; beating them in cold blood, he drives the women into the chambers. The floors of the chambers are slippery. The victims slip and fall, and they cannot get up for new numbers of forcibly driven victims fall upon them. The chief throws small children into the chambers over the heads of the women. When the execution chambers are filled the doors are hermetically closed and the slow suffocation of living people begins, brought about by the steam issuing from the numerous vents in the pipes. At the beginning, stifled cries penetrate to the outside; gradually they quiet down and 15 minutes later the execution is complete.

Now comes the turn of the grave diggers. Shouting and cursing, the German overseers drive the diggers to their work, which consists of getting the bodies out of the execution chambers. The grave-diggers stand at the scoop, near the valves. The valves open but not a body falls out. Due to the steam all the bodies have become a homogenous mass stuck together with the perspiration of the victims. In their death agonies, arms, legs, trunks are intertwined into a gigantic macabre entanglement. To make it possible for the grave-diggers to get out single bodies, cold water from the near-by well is poured over the mass. Then the bodies separate and may be taken out.

In literary terms, this is third-person omniscient narration, the customary POV for FICTION. The above is a gassing as envisioned by a novelist. It cannot be from an actual person describing direct observations.

[Wetzelrad]

Google Translate gives "Dozens of people saved from this gigantic torture camp recount their tragic experiences."

It's an odd thing to claim. This passage is unmistakably written as a contemporary event in the second week of August 1942, as if there were already dozens of escapees present at that time. Is this plausible? Even if we allowed that "dozens" was meant to refer to a later-arrived-at total, still the latest date it could be is November 15, 1942.

Holocaust skeptics are generalized and mocked as supposedly believing in a grand conspiracy which would require a belief in Jewish omnipotence. For example, Pierre Vidal-Naquet put it this way:

Such an enormous conspiracy might seem to stretch the credulity of even the deepest paranoia about Jewish cunning and omnipotence, requiring as it does a seamless coordination of testimony from many different (often opposing) governments and agencies, plus thousands, indeed tens of thousands, of people far-flung geographically and separated by an enormous diversity of interests, purposes, and perspectives. If such an unimaginable project had been accomplished [...]

https://firstthings.com/the-big-lie-continued/

Yet how are we to regard the Jews if they were really able to escape out of a top-secret Nazi death camp, numbering in the dozens, and revealing all of its secrets, all within the very month that it opened? And then immediately went to work writing about it, right under the Nazis' thumb, in the middle of the Warsaw Ghetto. To believe that this actually happened requires a very conspiratorial mind and definitely requires some notion of Jewish omnipotence.

On the other hand, it would actually be very believable if dozens of prisoners escaped from a labor or transit camp. One that had no particularly valuable secrets.

Separate from all that, it should be pointed out that the report's details on the gas chambers come from "the report of an eyewitness", i.e. a single person. This means that the other escapees who contributed to this, however many they numbered, either didn't see the chamber or gave a contradictory description. (For example, one of those could have been the anonymous witness who claimed there were "a hundred of these [gas] chambers". From Treblinka, p.49.)

Tracking the November report's rumor transmission a step further, a press article in Glos Warszaway might be the first to mention the 10 chambers of "house of death no. 2." It's also in the Ringelblum Archive, and dated as "After November 1942."

Mattogno quotes part of it in TORC HH#28 [...]

Ah, good catch. I didn't realize TORC has some additional material compared to Treblinka.

"Death House" or "House of Death No. 2" strikes me as a very particular phrasing. You only see it in these old underground reports. Anything using that phrase probably stemmed from the same source, yeah? Possibly a clue to determine authorship.