Jankiel Wiernik

[pilgrimofdark]

I'm putting this here as totally uncorroborated so far, but...

On August 17, 1944, Colonel Trapeznikov, head of the 65th Army’s SMERSH counter-intelligence department, reported to General Vadis about a camp the Germans had specifically built for the mass extermination of the population—primarily Poles and Jews. Counter-intelligence officers interviewed witnesses, including Jan Wernis—author of the pamphlet *A Year in Treblinka*—who had worked as a carpenter at the camp. The Military Council of the 65th Army established a commission to investigate these atrocities.

- Source

Original Russian:

Spoiler

17 августа 1944 года начальник ОКР "Смерш" 65-й армии полковник Трапезников доложил генералу Вадису о лагере, который немцы специально построили для массового истребления главным образом польского и еврейского населения. Контрразведчики опросили свидетелей, включая автора брошюры "Год в Треблинке" Яна Верниса, который работал плотником в лагере. Военный совет 65-й армии создал комиссию для расследования злодеяний.

I don't think Wiernik was interviewed by SMERSH, but August 15-17 was the date of some of the earliest Soviet interrogations related to Treblinka I and II. The earliest SMERSH report on Treblinka I know of is dated September 17 and doesn't mention Wiernik. But SMERSH certainly could have had a copy and Russian translation of Wiernik's book by August 17.

This Russian website could have garbled details, but worth checking if the SMERSH Trawniki guard interrogation reports ever surface online.

[pilgrimofdark]

The Treblinka Museum has put out a fascinating piece of revisionist research in the book Treblinka Warns and Reminds!.

Piotr Jagła's chapter "The Religious Elements of the Extermination at Treblinka: an Attempt at an Analysis of the Issue."

The author uses the meme that Nazis were the real Jews to argue that the Germans operated and reorganized Treblinka according to the Jewish religious calendar.

However, he also extensively cites the Wiernik Group's secret brochure A Year in Treblinka to point out the religious context of the gas chamber buildings and other themes.

• 3 old gas chambers
• 3 meter tall fences
• 3x3 meter ditch
• 5 stairs to ascend to the chambers
• 5 weeks to build the new gas chambers
• 5 gas chambers on each side similar to 5 of the 10 commandments on each of 2 tablets
• 5x5 square meters size of old gas chamber rooms
• 50 "people stepped forward"
• 50 "approximately" square meters size of new gas chambers
• 50 meters beyond the fences were the anti-tank traps
• 7x7 meter interior rooms of new chambers
• "about 700 of us"
• 10 new gas chambers

That's not even getting into "Wiernik's" number of graves, sizes, etc., which use similar figures.

These are religiously-important numbers: 3, 5, 7, 10.

• 5 books of Moses / the Torah
• 10 commandments
• 7 days of creation / days of the week
• 10 Egyptian plagues
• 7x7 Jubilee year
• 7 day duration of some Jewish holidays
• 7 branched Menorah
• 7x7 Shavuot's 7 weeks
• 50 - the day of Shavuot (day after 7 Sabbaths)

The article also briefly mentions "Wiernik's" and the Torah's characteristic use of repetition:

Work on these gas chambers lasted five weeks.

In such conditions, we built the death chambers for ourselves and our brothers. It took five weeks.

The author of the article seems to be a Christian, so is using biblical references. There might be even deeper religious symbolism in the book for someone familiar with Judaism, especially that practiced in Poland and Eastern Galicia.

I thought the Wiernik Group's book reads as an allegory of the history of the Warsaw ghetto itself. I still think that's part of it, but this article helps explain why its descriptions of physical space are often so unworldly.