Soviet Treblinka Investigation 1944-September

In September 1944, a joint Polish-Soviet group of investigatory bodies conducted an examination of the area of the Treblinka camps.

Members of the Polish-Soviet Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, the Information and Propaganda Department of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, and the Military Council of the 2nd Belorussian Front were involved in the investiation.

The documents below include interrogation protocols of witnesses, a map of the Treblinka II camp, schematics of the gas chambers, and the official report.

Report from the correspondent of the army newspaper “For the Motherland” Major D.I. Novoplyansky to the head of the political department of the 70th Army Colonel Maslovsky, September 9, 1944 (certified copy dated September 22, 1944)

While fulfilling the editorial assignment, I twice visited the site of the Treblinka Tod camp (death camp), established by the Germans between Warsaw and Białystok (6 km south of the Małkinia Górna junction station).

Former prisoners Wolf Szejnberg and Mendel Koritnicki, who previously lived in Warsaw, speak about this in more detail than others.

It's clear from the accounts that in July 1942, the Germans ordered all British and Americans to assemble at Warsaw's Prison Square for an exchange. Notices were posted stating that the Germans had reached an agreement with the Allies to exchange British and American prisoners for German prisoners of war. It was also strongly emphasized that for every British or American, the Allies would give up two Germans. The British and Americans were GUARANTEED TO RETURN TO THEIR HOMELAND. Wolf Szejnberg personally read such an announcement. The existence of such announcements is confirmed by former Warsaw residents Szymon Cegiel, Eney Tracz, and Korytnicki, who currently reside in Kosów (Węgrów County).

Szejnberg and Koritnicki testify that British and American citizens, along with their families, were transported from Warsaw to Treblinka in trucks in July 1942. People in the city knew that foreigners were being taken to Treblinka, but at the time, the name meant nothing to people. Some simply expressed surprise: after all, Jews were supposedly being taken to Treblinka for work, so why were British and Americans being taken there for exchange?

Wolf Szejnberg, who was lucky enough to escape death and later worked as a baker in the Treblinka camp, claims that the British and Americans were not held in the camp for a single day, but were, along with thousands of others arriving at Treblinka, immediately sent to the "bathhouse," where they were killed. He knows this from a number of conversations in the camp, including those of the German administration. Unterscharführer Schwarz, for example, said that the British bombed his home and family in Lübeck, for which he took revenge by participating in the extermination of the British there.

Wolf Szejnberg currently resides in the Albinów estate (4 km northwest of Kosów). He is also connected to several other witnesses living in Węgrów, Kosów, and Sokołów Podlaski.

Koritnicki, who arrived at the camp somewhat later and subsequently worked as a tinsmith at Treblinka Camp No. 2, personally saw suitcases belonging to Americans and British prisoners near the "bathhouse," among the belongings of the murdered. He asked who these seemingly unusual items belonged to, and several people explained that the British and Americans had "passed" there and that these were their suitcases and other belongings.

Considering that the question of the extermination of the British and Americans in the Treblinka death camp is of exceptional political interest at the present time, I request your petition to appoint an investigation into this matter.

September 9, 1944

MAJOR Novoplyansky

Protocol of the preliminary investigation and information about the former concentration camp Treblinka, September 15, 1944.

According to the instructions of the Chairman of the Polish-Soviet Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes, Mr. WITOLD A., the Secretary of the Polish-Soviet Commission, Mr. SOBOLEWSKI P., the representative of the Information and Propaganda Department of the Polish Committee of National Liberation, Mr. HODŹKO, and the representative of the Military Council of the 2nd Belorussian Front, Lieutenant Colonel LEVAKOV G. E., visited the site of the former concentration camp in Treblinka, created by the German invaders for the mass extermination of citizens of Poland and other European countries.

The Treblinka area is located 7 kilometers from the Małkinia railway junction in Sokołów County. German bandits built a railway line directly to the camp site to transport prisoners directly and undetected to the concentration camp.

The camp is located in a forest, one kilometer from the highway and the railway line leading from Małkinia to Siedlce. The concentration camp is surrounded by three rows of barbed wire and anti-tank forts.

The remains of burned-out barracks, the charred walls of brick and concrete outbuildings, and a large number of scattered household items were discovered: bowls, mugs, forks, children's toys, scraps of documents and books, torn pieces of clothing, and numerous shoes of all sizes and types. The earth was dug up, and the smell of decomposing corpses was palpable. All of this indicates that this is where German murderers carried out mass exterminations using their well-known "scientific" method.

Under the onslaught of the victorious Red Army, the German murderers, trying to erase the traces of their crime, burned and destroyed everything they had created at Treblinka during the three and a half years of the concentration camp's existence.

The forest clearing where the camp is located is a sandy field overgrown with small trees and surrounded by a dense pine forest. This forest shielded the concentration camp from view.

According to the testimony of former camp prisoner Jacob DOMB, a resident of Warsaw, Franciszkańska Street, 24, DAWYDOWSKI Jan, a resident of the village of Poniatowo, a former prisoner in this camp, Maria WLADARSKA, a resident of the village of Grondy, 2 kilometers from the camp, whose husband died in Treblinka, and KORITNICKI, a resident of the fort of Albinów, located near Treblinka, IT IS ESTABLISHED:

The Tremblinka concentration camp was divided into two parts, located one and a half kilometers apart.

The first section was called "Death Camp No. 2." This camp, on the site of which two burnt-out outbuildings now stand, was also divided into two sections, with a railway line leading to Camp No. 2. Something resembling a train station was built here to conceal the primary extermination mission. A triple wall of barbed wire was concealed by tree branches. Therefore, those brought here initially believed they were at a transfer point heading east.

In the first section of Death Camp No. 2, the arriving prisoners were stripped. Their clothes were ordered to be placed in a designated area, and then, naked, they were forced to run with their hands raised toward the so-called bathhouse. The bathhouse was disguised as a public bathhouse, but in reality, it was a three-room gas chamber. Initially, they resorted to sucking the air out of the chamber using a small car engine. Later, due to the large number of people being brought to their deaths, chemical agents were used. This chamber could simultaneously house and kill approximately 400 people. On the roof of this hermetically sealed chamber, there was a small window for observing the death throes of the dying. Women had their hair cut before being strangled, and their hair still lies at the scene of the crime. About 400 Jews worked in this chamber, carrying the bodies of the strangled to large pits dug by moles, which were previously prepared and located within Death Camp No. 2.

In the winter of 1943, German murderers began digging up and burning corpses. They also used shrews for this purpose. Torn fragments of personal documents found scattered here prove that citizens of Poland, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and other intellectuals, as well as ordinary workers, were murdered here.

The second part of the concentration camp was called "Camp No. 1" and was located one and a half kilometers from the death camp. Camp No. 1 was similarly fenced with a triple row of barbed wire and anti-tank forks. This part of Camp No. 1 was divided into four fields, the first field containing eight barracks and housing the commandant's office and guards, consisting of approximately 200 SS men and their assistants. This field also housed food storage facilities, outbuildings for horses and cattle, buildings for chickens and ducks, garages, a local power station, and even a small swimming pool for ducks. From here, a road led into the forest to the executions.

The second part of Camp No. 1 consisted of three fields, with one barrack each built in the first and second fields, and two barracks in the third field. Women were imprisoned here. Each barrack was separated from the next by a high wall of barbed wire. This part of Camp No. 1 housed the kitchen and workshops—a metalworking shop, a carpentry shop, a forge, a weaving bench, and an engine. A large concrete cellar still holds the remaining potato reserves.

The total number of prisoners was approximately 3,000 per day. Twice a day, the so-called "appel," or inspection, took place, at which everyone without exception—the healthy, the sick, and the dead—was required to report. The sick were separated and finished off with sticks; some were shot. The dead were carried out by healthy prisoners. As a daily routine, the German criminals practiced beating prisoners, primarily on the head with a stick. Anyone incapable of work was also finished off in the same manner.

500 meters from Camp No. 1 lies a pine forest, and long mass graves begin at the edge of this forest.

According to the testimony of Jan DAWYDOWSKI, a resident of the village of Poniatowo and a former prisoner at this camp, these graves were dug in advance, reaching 4 meters deep, 6 meters wide, and approximately 300 meters long.

Executions took place over these pre-prepared pits, and people were finished off with a stick to the head.

DAWYDOWSKI personally witnessed German SS men bringing in entire carloads of people and then murdering them. He also witnessed an incident where they brought in three people, ordered them to kneel, and then shot them in the back of the head.

The freshly dug sand, the large number of human bones scattered everywhere, and even a severed foot lying in one spot, are still visible.

According to witnesses and prisoners, almost no one ever left Camp No. 1. The minimal rations led to rapid depletion of prisoners, making them unable to work, and ultimately, to their murder.

Witness Stanisław KRYM, a resident of Tremblinka, whose home is 500 meters from Camp No. 1, saw vehicles transporting people to the forest. Some walked, and then machine gunfire could be heard: "I personally saw prisoners working at grinding stone and being beaten with sticks when they were too exhausted to continue. There were Poles and Jews here, as well as women and children aged 10 and older."

Witness Maria WLADARSKI, a resident of the village of Grądy, located two kilometers from the camp, recounts: "I saw entire freight cars filled with people, heard screams and pleas for help. From our field, I could clearly see mountains of clothing where the prisoners who had been brought in would climb, undress there, and then descend and disappear somewhere. I heard the screams and cries of the dying, as well as music and singing—first from men, women, and children, whom the SS forced to sing before their deaths."

“My husband, Tadeusz Wladarski, died in this camp along with 40 other Polish prisoners within a few hours.”

Considering that the construction of the concentration camp in Tremblinka dates back to 1941, the area occupied by the camp is 5 square kilometers, its structure and facilities, the number of barracks, the existence of the so-called "bathhouse" - a gas chamber, the enormous quantity of things, the size of the pits – all this proves that hundreds of thousands of innocent people were brutally murdered here, whose only crime was that they lived and that they did not carry out the orders of the German authorities on the delivery of food on time, carried on prohibited trade or did not remove the required amount of timber on time.

The items found indicate that men, women, and children of all ages, along with entire families, were imprisoned here. Items found, such as violin parts, children's toys, hair curlers, books, and other paraphernalia, prove that many arrived here unaware of their purpose.

Fragments of burned and destroyed passports prove that citizens of Poland, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and other German-occupied countries were imprisoned here.

Considering that the Tremblinka concentration camp was one of the largest camps for the mass extermination of innocent people, it is essential to first collect all possible items from the camp grounds, especially documents, and hand them over to the Polish-Soviet Commission for investigation.

Preserve and ensure the protection of the camp site itself as an international memorial to the terrible tragedy that was endured.

In the near future, it is necessary to begin excavating the mass graves, which will reveal yet another secret of German crimes to the world.

Secretary of the Polish-Soviet Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes /signature/ (magistrate P. Sobolevsky)

Representative of the Information and Propaganda Department of the Polish-Soviet Communist Party of Poland /signature/ (M. Khodzko)

Representative of the Military Council of the 2nd Belorussian Front /signature/ (Lieutenant Colonel G. E. Levakov)

September 15, 1944

Treblinka

Interrogation protocol of Cheni Trać about the situation of Jews in the Treblinka labor camp and the mass shooting on July 23, 1944. The village of Kosów Lacki, September 21, 1944.

On September 21, 1944, the military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness:

1. Last name, first name, patronymic: Cheni Yankelevna Trać
2. Year of birth: 1913
3. Place of birth: Zarlib-Kostlin, Ostrów Mazowiecka County, Łomża Voivodeship
4. Nationality: Jewish
5. Social background and status: housewife. Husband is a shoemaker from the working class.
6. Education: 7th grade
7. Place of residence: Kosów Lacki

I have been warned of liability for giving false testimony under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR.

The interrogation was conducted through an interpreter, Burstein Heim, a resident of Kosów, Warsaw Voivodeship, who has been warned of liability for false translation. [Signature/]

In March 1942, SS soldiers arrived in Kosów from a camp located 8 km from Kosów. Along with the soldiers, the camp's leaders arrived: Hautsturmführer von Eupen, Untersturmführers Preif and Lanz, Rottenführer Mobis, and Navigator Felden, who had with them a list of the best Jewish artisans in Kosów. My husband, Trać Lejba, was also on this list as a good shoemaker. All the Jews on the list were herded into the town square and then driven under guard to the camp, which was called the "Treblinka Labor Camp." My husband remained in the camp until July 1944. During his stay in the camp, I met with him several times. When I met my husband, he told me about the terrible atrocities committed by the Germans and guards against the camp prisoners. The work was extremely hard—they forced them to dig the earth and uproot tree stumps. They were fed very poorly, causing them to quickly lose strength and productivity. If a prisoner couldn't work or worked poorly, they were brutally killed. Moreover, they killed in a painful manner, forcing the victim to suffer before death. The most common method of murder was a hammer blow to the bridge of the nose or head, followed by beatings with sticks and whips. Ten to twelve people were killed this way daily, not counting those who died of exhaustion and disease. A guard's stick or whip accompanied the prisoner everywhere. Horrific beatings followed at every step, beatings carried out without provocation—just for fun. They beat with whatever came to hand—sticks, shovels, axes, and even slashed with knives. I remember particularly well an incident that occurred in July 1942. When my husband saw his children at a meeting, he burst into tears, saying that "soon they will kill them like that too," and at the same time he told about the terrible picture of the extermination in the camp of 120 innocent children brought from Warsaw in July 1942.

As my husband recounted, children of various ages were brought to the camp, lined up in front of all the prisoners, and forced to sing songs. Then, out of a total of 120 children, 60 of the weakest and smallest were selected and taken to pits in the forest, where they were brutally murdered. The children were killed with sticks, whips, axes, daggers, and hammer blows to the face or head.

The heartbreaking cries of small children echoed throughout the camp. The 60 healthy children who remained in the camp subsequently died of exhaustion or overwork, or were murdered in similarly brutal ways. I witnessed all these atrocities and murders committed in the camp myself when I arrived there. This happened under the following circumstances. In March 1943, the Germans conducted several roundups and rounded up all the Jews living in the vicinity of the camp—women and children. They took me along with two children: my daughter Zosya, 13, and my son Abram, 8. All the women and children were placed in a separate barracks, separate from the men. There were 35 of us in the barracks. Upon arrival at the camp, we were forced to wash the laundry of the camp staff. The work was very hard, and the food was very poor. They gave us only 200 grams of bread a day, bad coffee in the morning, and beetroot or rutabaga soup in the afternoon. Cooked earthworms and other garbage were often found in the soup. Being near the men's work, I often saw prisoners being beaten with sticks, shovels, and other blunt objects. The usual method of execution with a hammer was to force the prisoner to lower his head, and when he did, they struck him on the back of the head with the hammer, which resulted in death. Sometimes they struck several times before finally killing the victim. When the Russian troops successfully advanced, we women and children were transferred to the men's camp for fear of escape, who were under stricter guard than the women. And here I saw the horrific extermination of the Jews more closely.

All the male prisoners were extremely emaciated and weak; the work was extremely hard: they dug the earth, sawed timber, and uprooted stumps. Food was limited to water in the morning and evening, and for lunch, soup made from beets or unpeeled potatoes, which contained a lot of sand and various debris. Guards walked everywhere with sticks and whips in their hands, beating every prisoner they encountered. Due to the backbreaking labor and terrible food, people quickly weakened and were unable to work, and such prisoners were killed with sticks, hammers, etc. Up to 10-12 people were killed in this way daily. I remained in the Treblinka labor camp until July 23, 1944. When the Red Army began to approach Treblinka, the Germans decided to exterminate all the Jews – men, women and children – who were in the labor camp, for which purpose on the morning of July 23, 1944, they herded us all together, about 570 people in total – men, women and children, then ordered everyone to lie down on the ground. After this, the prisoners were taken in groups of 20 to 30 to the forest pits, where they were killed and the bodies thrown into the pits. I and my children were in the last group of 32, and my husband was also in this group. We had to lie on the ground until evening, when our turn came. We were ordered to rise from the ground and put our hands on our heads, and the men were ordered to pull their trousers down to their knees. This was done to make escape more difficult if anyone tried. Thus, we were led to a huge pit, almost filled to the brim with the corpses of those killed before us. As we were led to the pit, the guards accompanying us brutally beat the men with rifle butts, sticks, and feet. To prevent my husband from running, a guard shot him in the head with a rifle butt and bruised his side. As we were being led away, I said to my husband, "Let's run. It's better to be shot in the back than to watch them shoot." My husband, badly beaten, couldn't run, so I said, "Run alone with the children." When we were brought to the pit and the Germans opened fire on us, a loud scream arose from the women and children, who were running from side to side, seeking safety. I took advantage of this, grabbed my children by the hands—a 13-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son—and ran off into the woods. The children didn't want to run and, shouting, "We're going to daddy," broke free and ran back. I, however, continued running into the woods, as it was already dark. The Germans didn't run into the woods, but opened fire on me and wounded me in the right side. I hid in the forest for one night, and then went to the village of Maleshev, where I hid with a peasant for seven days until my wound healed, and then went to the village of Olekhnya, where I hid with an acquaintance until the arrival of the Red Army. What happened to my husband and children, I don’t know anything. I assume they were killed.

Question: Was there any other camp in Treblinka besides the work camp?

Answer: Two kilometers from the labor camp there was another camp, a "death camp," as it was called, but I don't know what it was like, since I wasn't anywhere near it and no one was allowed there. From what the guards told me, many Jews were brought to that camp and burned in special ovens. The screams of people from the "death camp" could be heard in our camp day and night.

From about August 1942, large fires burned in the "death camp" every day, day and night. The flames were visible from far away, columns of black smoke rose above the camp, and the smell of burnt flesh made it difficult to breathe. From the guards' conversations, we knew that they were burning the corpses of murdered people—Jews. This burning continued for over a year. I know nothing else about this camp.

I can't show anything else; the report has been written down and translated correctly from my words and read to me [signature/].

Translated from Polish to Russian [signature/]

Interrogated by:

Military Investigator

Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice [signature/]

Interrogation protocol of Tanhum Grinberg on the functioning of the Treblinka death camp and the preparation of the uprising on August 2, 1943 [Błonie town] September 21, 1944

On September 21, 1944, the military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness:

1. Last name, first name, patronymic: Grinberg Tanhum Haskelevich
2. Year of birth: 1909
3. Place of birth: Błonie, Błonski County, Warsaw Voivodeship
4. Nationality: Jewish
5. Social status: craftsman, shoemaker
6. Education: 7th grade
7. Place of residence: Błonie, Błonski Powiat

The interrogation was conducted through a Hebrew-Polish interpreter. The interpreter was Wolf Szejnberg, a resident of Warsaw.

I have been warned of liability for false translation under Article 25 of the Criminal Code. /signature/.

I have been warned of liability for giving false testimony under Article 25 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR. /signature/.

Until February 1941, I lived in the town of Błonie. In early 1941, the Germans began deporting all the Jews to Warsaw, where a special section of Warsaw was set aside for them, fenced off and isolated from the rest of the city. On February 7, 1941, I, along with other Jews from Błonie, was brought to Warsaw, where I was settled in the area set aside for Jews, which was called the "ghetto." Living conditions in this "ghetto" were terrible: they forced people to work very hard, and gave them nothing to eat. For example, for a whole day of work at the factory of the German Schultz, they gave only 50 grams of bread. The factory made shoes and clothing for the troops. There was a terrible famine among the Jews, from which dozens of people died daily, and every day, on my way to work, I saw many corpses of Jews who had died of starvation near houses. During the day, the corpses were removed. And this happened every day. In total, over 600,000 Jews from various parts of Poland lived in the Warsaw ghetto. At the end of July 1942, we were told that all Jews would be resettled to Ukraine, where they would have work and live well. And after that, Jews began to be deported from Warsaw every day. They deported 10,000-15,000, and sometimes even 20,000 people daily. On August 4, 1942, German soldiers cordoned off the neighborhood where I lived, and we were all told that today we would be taken to Ukraine, and were told to take with us the necessary things, but not more than 25 kg in weight. After that, all the men, women, and children were led to the station, where they began to load us into train cars. Our train consisted of about 40 train cars, each crammed with up to 170 men, women, and children. Given the sheer number of people, it was impossible to even sit down. People were suffocating from the lack of air and the stifling heat. We left Warsaw in the evening and traveled all night, arriving at Treblinka station in the morning. No one was allowed to leave the train cars during the journey. No one was given anything to drink, and when people asked for water, the guards accompanying the train demanded valuables. People would give up everything they had to get a sip of water, handing over money, gold, and other valuables that the guards took, but they were not given any water in return. We arrived in Treblinka on the morning of August 5, 1942. When the train entered the area surrounded by barbed wire up to 3 meters high, the train doors opened and we were ordered out. We were given only five minutes to unload. As soon as we exited the train, the guards standing near the cars began beating everyone with whips. When all the cars were unloaded, one German ordered all the men to move to the right onto the platform, and the women and children to the left, toward the barracks. Guards, or "wachmans," stood around us. After this, they ordered all the artisans and specialists to raise their hands. I, as a shoemaker, also raised my hand. And then, 204 of us out of the 6,000 people who arrived on this train, were taken aside and given some of the food confiscated from the arriving people to eat. The rest of the people were ordered to undress, told they were now going to the bathhouse. They piled all their belongings in one pile, and asked to deposit money and valuables in the cash register "for safekeeping." After this, everyone was herded toward a building they called the bathhouse. As I later learned, this was the house where all the new arrivals were gassed. When the new arrivals were herded into the "bathhouse," 204 of us were led to another part of the camp, from where the "bathhouse" was invisible, as it was surrounded by barbed wire and camouflaged by tree branches. The only sounds we could hear were the screams and cries of women and children, whom the guards were beating along the way. We, the workers, were housed in a barracks with nothing but three-tiered bunks, and we had to sleep on bare boards. The next day at 5 a.m., we were awakened and put to work sorting the belongings confiscated from the new arrivals. Between 400 and 600 of us worked on this job, depending on the amount of supplies received. The daily routine for the work crew was as follows: we rose at 6:00 AM, weren't allowed to wash, and were herded into the kitchen, where we were given one liter of coffee without bread. The coffee was simply colored dirty water, then we were marched to work. At 12:00 PM, there was a lunch break, during which we were given a liter of soup made from dirty, unpeeled potatoes. Rarely, we were given the meat of dead horses, which peasants from surrounding villages had taken out to the fields. These horses were then picked up, already decomposing, and brought back to the camp, where they were fed to us. They didn't give us bread for lunch either, as we only got bread for dinner. Our job was sorting and packing things. The work was very hard, as trains with people arrived frequently and there was a huge amount of stuff. We were guarded by Ukrainian guards, who stood around us at a distance of about five meters from each other. Each guard had a rifle and a whip. The treatment of the workers was brutal. They beat them without provocation; for example, if a person got tired during work and straightened his back, the guards would immediately beat him with whips, beat him until he lost consciousness, and very often beat him to death. I remember an incident when a Jewish man joined our team, arriving with his wife on the train. When he refused to work after learning that his wife would be killed, they didn't kill him right away, but instead beat him with shovels for two days, intermittently, until he was reduced to a shapeless mass. All this was done in front of the workers.

Another time, a Jew arrived at the camp with his wife and children. The wife and children were sent to the "bathhouse" (a gas chamber), and the Jew was sent to our work detachment. When this Jew learned what a "bathhouse" was and that his family had been murdered, he somehow stabbed one of the guards with a knife he had hidden on his person. For this, he was also beaten for two days until he died. Simultaneously, for the Jew's murder of the guard, 150 Jews were selected from the work detachment and immediately killed in the most brutal manner: whipped, beaten to death with shovels, and slaughtered with blows to the head and other parts of the body. Then, in May 1943, [while] throwing bad things into the pit, [illegible] gold was thrown in there, which the guards noticed, so they gathered all the workers in the square, including two Jews who were carrying things to the pit, brought them to the center and began to beat them with whips and shovels, and then hung them by their feet on poles specially dug into the square for this purpose. They hung like that for a long time, and then the SS-man Mitte shot them. Mitte was known for his particular cruelty and hanged many people. I myself was whipped about 20 times and each time I received 25 lashes. Why they beat me, I don’t even know. Several times they beat me because, while working, in a half-bent position all day, I got tired and straightened my back for a second. Due to the backbreaking workload and poor nutrition, the workers quickly became exhausted. As soon as a supervisor saw a worker performing poorly or simply disliking him, such prisoners were sent to the "infirmary," where they were given no assistance and were immediately killed. This was most often the work of the SS officer Mitte. Up to 100-150 people were killed in this manner daily, thus the work crew was replenished daily by new arrivals. I spent five months on the team sorting the belongings of the exterminated Jews, and then, as a shoemaker, I was transferred to the shoe shop, which was located in the same barracks where the work crew lived.

In the shoemaker's workshop, we made shoes for the German army. The material we used was shoes confiscated from Jews, Poles, Czechs, Roma, and others exterminated in the camp. There were 24 shoemakers working in the workshop, and we made up to 15 pairs of shoes a day. I worked as a shoemaker until August 1943, that is, until the Jewish uprising. As a result of the uprising, many, including myself, fled the camp.

Next, I want to talk about the preparation and execution of the uprising in the "death camp," or Camp No. 2.

While in the camp, despite the strict security and the near impossibility of escape, many considered fleeing the camp and would rather be killed than endure terrible hardships and expect a painful death any day. Gradually, a group of six or seven people formed in the camp who decided to develop an escape plan. This group included the Jews Kurland and Raizman, who now lives in the city of Węgrów, the Jews Mardins, Dr. Rybak, and Dr. Raizman. I don't know the names of the others. Engineer Galewski was also an organizer. The whereabouts of the others, besides Raizman, I don't know. These people prepared the escape plan. Almost all the camp workers knew about the uprising. To carry out the escape, weapons were needed. To this end, while sorting things, we used various means to pass hidden money and valuables to the camp doctor, the renowned Warsaw professor Horonzhinsky, who used them to buy and give us eight pistols. In May 1943, SS men discovered money on Khoronzhinsky and began to question him about where he got it. Since Khoronzhinsky did not say this and did not reveal the conspiracy, the SS killed him. Preparations for the uprising lasted about four months. One of the prisoners had access to the gun shop, found the key, and on August 2nd, the day the uprising was scheduled, opened the shop and we took about 80 grenades, most without fuses, and several submachine guns. The uprising began at 3:30 PM on the signal—a gunshot. Since [the] tasks had been assigned in advance, the camp guards were quickly disarmed. At the moment of the signal, a grenade was thrown into the gasoline tanks, which started a large fire and set the barracks ablaze, increasing the panic even more. Taking advantage of this, some 80 people, some of whom escaped from the camp through gates and passages cut in the barbed wire fences, were able to escape. Gendarmes from neighboring villages immediately launched a roundup, and many of the escapees were caught and killed. Many others, unable to escape, were murdered in the camp. After the prisoners' escape from the "death camp," the Germans, fearing publicity and exposure of the unprecedented crimes they had committed in the camp, began liquidating the "death camp." No more trains arrived at the camp, but for about a month, an oven burned in the camp, where the remaining corpses were incinerated. Afterward, all the ashes were mixed with the earth, and the camp grounds were then sown with lupine and other crops. All the ovens and barracks, with the exception of one, were completely destroyed, so it is now difficult to recognize that this site once housed a gigantic extermination factory where several million people, mostly Jews, were murdered.

Question: Tell us what you know about the mass extermination of people at the Treblinka "death camp"?

Answer: From August 5, 1942, when I arrived at the "death camp," until August 1944, I witnessed two to four trains of up to 70-80 cars, and sometimes even more, arriving at the camp daily. The trains were primarily carrying Jews from Poland, as well as from other German-occupied countries: France, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and others. Each train contained approximately 170 men, women, and children. The arriving train entered the "death camp" grounds, where everyone was ordered to quickly exit the cars. Since the entire train could not fit into the camp, about 20 cars would enter, from which people were unloaded, and then the train would continue on, unloading people from the next 20 cars. And when the entire train was unloaded, the carriages were swept, and the empty train left the camp grounds.

The guards who escorted the train to the camp were not allowed onto the camp grounds, as everything that happened in the death camp was kept strictly secret, and no one who entered the camp ever left. During unloading, the entire train was surrounded by guards to prevent escape. When unloading was complete, the command was given: men to the right, into the square, and women with children to the left, into the barracks. After this, everyone was ordered to strip naked, saying they were going to the bathhouse. After this, all the laundry was thrown into a pile. In the barracks where the women undressed, there were several Jewish hairdressers who cut the women's hair, which was then sent to Germany for some unknown purpose. Before this, everyone was told to take all their money and valuables with them and deposit them in the cash register "for safekeeping." People, unaware of what awaited them, believed it, as they were told they were being taken to Ukraine and handed over valuables. While the SS men were undressing, Unterscharführer Sukhomel hurried them, saying that the water would cool down in the bathhouse, but also that soap and towels would be provided there. Once the men had undressed, a group of five to six thousand was herded from the changing rooms down the corridor to the "bathhouse." While the guards were urging the men on, they beat them with whips, but when they were herded into the "bathhouse," the real atrocities began. Along the wire-fenced corridor leading to the bathhouse, Ukrainian guards stood with whips in hand, mercilessly beating women, children, and men passing by. At that moment, the incessant screams and cries of women and children echoed throughout the camp. Driven mad by fear and pain, they ran to the "bathhouse," unaware of what awaited them there. The sick and elderly, unable to move, were carried on stretchers to the "hospital," which consisted of a small building surrounded by barbed wire and camouflaged so that the interior could not be seen from the outside. A sign above the entrance read "Hospital." In the "hospital" were an SS soldier and a Czech named Bakhmanov, who was dressed in a robe and had a red cross on his armband. Near the building was a large pit. When a patient was brought to the "hospital," they would sit him on a chair near the pit, and SS men or Bakhmanov would shoot him in the back of the head from behind, after which the body would be thrown into the pit. I witnessed all of this myself when I was brought to the death camp. Furthermore, while later working sorting things, I had to visit the "locker room" and the "hospital" several times, so I witnessed all of this. I didn't see the extermination of people in the "bathhouse" gas chamber, but from the accounts of a Jew named Abram Golberg, who worked carrying corpses from the "bathhouse" to the pits and ovens, and from the accounts of one guard who released gas into the "bathhouse," a man named Ivan the Ukrainian, I know that the bathhouse was a building with a corridor running down the middle, with rooms on either side of the corridor, each measuring approximately 5 x 5 x 2.5 meters, with cement walls and floors. I don't know how many cells there were, but the entire building was about 20-25 meters long. Each cell had a metal spout in the ceiling, reminiscent of a shower. The floors of the cells were doused with water, so that those trapped there would have the impression they were actually in a bathhouse.

Each cell had a large door facing the outside of the building. All doors were hermetically sealed and locked from the outside. Each cell could accommodate approximately 450 people. Between 5,000 and 6,000 people were forced into the "bathhouse" at a time, so cramped that they couldn't move a muscle, arm or leg and suffocated from the cramped conditions. Afterward, all the doors were locked, and Guard Ivan would start a motor parked outside a few meters from the bathhouse. A pipe ran from the motor to the bathhouse and then spread throughout all the cells. The motor resembled a tractor. I don't know how the suffocation occurred, but the Jew Golberg said that when the motor was turned on, it first pumped the air out of the cells, and then released exhaust gases from the motor into the cells. How this all happened, I don't know. The motor ran for 15-20 minutes, and that was enough to kill everyone in the cells. After this, all the outer doors were opened, and the corpses were dragged outside, where they were laid face up on the ground before being thrown into the pits. Several Jews, holding pliers, walked around, looking for gold teeth, and then extracting them. After all this, the corpses were thrown into the pits, and later directly into the ovens. Up to 15,000 to 18,000 people were killed in this way daily. There were cases when up to 22,000 people were killed in a single day. According to rough estimates, at least 3.5 million people were strangled during the existence of the "death camp." This can be judged by the amount of clothing confiscated from the prisoners. All clothing was sorted and packed into bales: coats of 10, jackets of 10, trousers of 25. All this was loaded onto train cars. A train car held 4,500 coats, 10,000 trousers, 45,000 pairs of shoes, and almost every week 60 to 120 train cars loaded with things were sent to Germany. When I arrived at the camp, there were only three asphyxiation chambers. Then, at the end of 1942, they began to build new ones, but I don’t know how many there were in total. From the beginning of the camp’s operation, that is, from July 1942, the bodies of people strangled in gas chambers were carried to enormous pits, where they were placed by the tens of thousands and covered with earth. At the end of 1942, dredging machines were brought to the camp, which dug up to 8 enormous pits measuring 50x50 meters and 8 meters deep. Concrete pillars were dug into the bottom of the pits, on which rail gratings were laid. Then they dug up the old graves and, using the same excavating machines, began to drag the bodies into these pits, which could hold up to 20,000 corpses each. Once the pits were filled to the brim, they doused the corpses with flammable material and set them alight. This was how the corpses were destroyed. This burning of the corpses lasted for many months. During this time, columns of black smoke rose above the camp, the fires were visible for tens of kilometers, and the unbearable smell of burning flesh permeated the surrounding area. At this time, and subsequently, the corpses of the strangled people were no longer buried but thrown directly into the ovens and burned. At first, fuel was used for kindling, but then an SS man who arrived from Lublin reported that women burned very well. From then on, the ovens were heated with the corpses of women, first cutting the corpses into four pieces. The legs burned especially well.

Question: What nationalities were the people primarily exterminated in the "death camp"?

Answer: The Treblinka death camp primarily exterminated Jews, who were brought there from all over Poland and other German-occupied countries: France, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Germany itself. Several trains of Roma were brought, and shortly before the "death camp" was destroyed, two trains of approximately 60 train cars of Poles were brought in, who were also exterminated. But, as I already said, the camp's primary extermination population was the Jewish population.

Question: What was the ashes from the burning of corpses used for?

Answer: The ashes remained in the ovens, and after a certain period of time, a layer of sand was poured over them, and then the ovens were relit. Very little ash was produced after the burning of the corpses.

Question: What were the roads in the camp and the highway covered with?

Answer: The roads in the camp and the highway were covered with coke and slag, brought in specifically for this purpose. Ashes from corpses were not sprinkled on the roads.

Question: Who do you know of those who committed murder in the camp?

Answer:

1. The camp commandant, Hauptsturmführer Himala, was a German from Poznan, about 45 years old, of average height, healthy, blond, and rarely visited the camp, only to check on the situation.
2. Untersturmführer Franz – deputy commander of the "death camp," a German, worked as a cook before the war, tall, with dark hair and black eyes. He was known for his exceptional cruelty in his treatment of prisoners. He personally participated in beatings and executions. He always carried a rifle and practiced his marksmanship by shooting at people. He personally punished people with whips, always carrying a large dog, pointing it at people, and amused himself by watching the dog tear out chunks of flesh.
3. Untersturmführer Mitte – German, 25 years old, of average height, walked with his head to one side, and had one gold tooth in his upper jaw on the right side. He was also known for his exceptional cruelty. He personally hanged dozens and shot hundreds of people from the labor detachment.
4. Unterscharführer Sepp – a German, a former criminal killer, 35 years old, tall, healthy, chubby, black. His cruelty went so far as to take two-month-old children, step on one leg, and, pulling the other, tear the children in half.
5. Unterscharführer Mille – a German from America, did not commit murders himself, but rather was a denunciator. It was on his denunciation that the famous Warsaw doctor, Professor Choronzhinsky, and many other Jews were killed.
6. Oberscharführer Ludwig – a German, engaged in the beating of Jews and the rape of women.
7. Unterscharführer Paul – a German, 27 years old, short, black, with a mustache, of strong build. Like Franz, he was distinguished by exceptional cruelty, personally beating and shooting Jews.
8. Unterscharführer Sukhomil – a German, 32 years old, blond, of medium height, supervised the unloading of train cars and beat people while herding them into the "bathhouse."
9. Unterscharführer Bals – a German, thin, short, with a fair complexion, surpassed Franz in his cruelty. As soon as a train arrived, he was the first to approach it and begin beating them with a whip, escorting them all the way to the gas chamber. He beat dozens of people to death.
10. Wachmann Widzemann – a Russian German, tall, fair-haired, demonstrated exceptional cruelty, was the senior guard of the "death camp," beating not only Jews but also guards, and brutally beating Jews with whips.
11. Tsugvakhman Rogoza, Ukrainian, 22-23 years old, blond, healthy, demonstrated exceptional cruelty when beating Jews, herding them into the gas chamber. He beat dozens of people to death.
12. Tsugvakhman Loch, German from Russia, 30 years old, short, blond. He stationed guards and personally beat Jews with whips.
13. Tsugvakhman Videnko, Ukrainian, 25 years old.

All of these individuals were exceptionally cruel. They beat, shot, hanged, raped women, and took an active part in the extermination of Jews.

I would like to add that construction of the death camp began in March 1942; it lasted four months, and in July 1942, the first trainload of Jews from Warsaw arrived. The camp was built according to the designs of SS architect Schulte.

I can't show you anything else. The report has been written down and translated correctly from my words and read to me: /signature/.

Translated from Hebrew to Russian: /signature/

Interrogated by: Military Investigator, Guard Senior Lieutenant of Justice /signature/

Interrogation protocol of Genia Marciniakówna regarding the construction and operation of the Treblinka death camp. Village of Kosów Lacki, September 21, 1944.

Kosów, September 21, 1944.

Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, military investigator of the 65th Army's Military Prosecutor's Office, interrogated the following as a witness, who testified:

Marciniakówna Genia, born in 1925, native of Rakoświca, Wołycin County, Poznań Voivodeship, Polish, resident of the Grabnia prison colony in Kosów.

Having been warned of liability for retracting testimony and for giving false testimony, she stated the following:

Question: How did you come to work at the Treblinka camp?

Answer: In January 1942, due to the illness of my friend Roza Shlaynova, who worked as a cleaner in the gendarmerie, I temporarily took her place and worked there for two months—until she recovered. Around March, I left this job. According to the procedure in force at the time, employers were required to notify the labor exchange when laying off an employee. This was the case with me. The gendarmerie duly notified the labor exchange of my dismissal, which registered me as unemployed. In late May 1942, my friend Zosya Mitovskaya invited me to the house of my friend Kalyata.

When I entered Kalyata's apartment, Mitovskaya, Kalyata, and an SS Obersturmführer, a German named Lampert and first name Erwin, were already there.

Zosya Mitovskaya, knowing I was unemployed, offered, in Lampert's presence, to go with her to work in Treblinka.

Lambert intervened in our conversation. He told me he needed two women to work as cooks at Treblinka. The salary, we learned from him, was 250 zlotys per month. The only thing he told us was that we'd have to travel to Treblinka station and the salary was 350 zlotys per month. Not a word was said about the camp. Mitovskaya and I agreed.

I must admit quite frankly that I was not particularly picky in choosing a place of work for the simple reason that I needed to find a job close to Kosów as quickly as possible, since otherwise I would undoubtedly have been sent to Germany. Moreover, the labor exchange had once intended to send me to Germany, but this time I managed to avoid this fate. The day after my first meeting with Lambert, he arrived by car in Kosów and took me to Treblinka. This was May 28, 1942. We drove to the forest 3 kilometers from the village of Wólka Okrąglik. At that time, there was one small barracks in the forest. A second, much larger one, was being built. By the time of my arrival, approximately 50 Poles and 150 Jews were busy building the barracks and cutting down trees. On the third day, another 150 Jews were brought from Węgrów. And then the hasty construction of a barbed wire fence began. Only then did I learn that I was on camp grounds. It's worth noting that the Germans didn't say anything about it. I learned about the camp's establishment from a Jew, who told me that people would be brought there for various types of labor.

Camp No. 2 subsequently became a kind of death factory.

Approximately two or three kilometers away from this camp was Camp No. 1, where primarily the Polish population was transported. I can't say anything at all about that camp because I didn't have access to it.

One small barrack, as I've already shown, contained a kitchen and dining room for the Germans, the camp office, and two living rooms. The commandant lived in one, and Mitovskaya and I in the other. The barrack also had an annex where five Germans from the camp staff lived. The remaining Germans, about 25 in total, stayed on the camp grounds during the day and went to Camp No. 1 to sleep in the evening. That's how it was for the first week of my stay in the camp. Then they built two more large barracks and a barn with a sand floor. The Germans lived in one barrack, and the Ukrainian guards in the other. All the Jewish workers slept in the barn, right on the sand, because there was practically no floor. Fifty Polish workers were allowed to go home at night. All of them were residents of nearby villages. The camp's construction lasted two months. Most of the workers were Jews. In addition to the three hundred Jews I mentioned earlier, up to three hundred Jews from Warsaw and Węgrów were brought to the camp by car during these two months. All of them were used for various construction jobs in the camp. For the first two months of the construction period, two Germans dressed in civilian clothes oversaw the overall construction. Then, after a month, they left, and command of the camp's construction passed to Obersturmführer Erwin Lampert.

The camp was built in the following order. After the first, so to speak, phase of the camp was completed—the barracks for the dining hall and office, the barracks for the Germans, the barracks for the Ukrainian guards, the food warehouse, and the barn for the Jewish workers—this entire section of the camp was hastily surrounded by a barbed wire fence up to three meters high. Moreover, the bare wire mesh was heavily interwoven with pine branches. Under these conditions, the fence appeared to be a continuous canopy of vegetation. So from a distance, it was impossible to even see the wire itself. Moreover, the spruce branches intertwined so densely that absolutely nothing could be seen on the other side of the fence. Once, before the fence was finally erected, I witnessed the construction of several barracks in another part of the camp, where the extermination of a huge Jewish population would later take place. I remember one of the Poles working on the camp's construction telling me that a large stone house was being built in the camp, its rooms upholstered in red cloth. He didn't tell me anything about the building's purpose. A railway line had been built to the camp. It ran behind the fence along the first part of the camp, where the camp staff were housed, and entered the other, main part of the camp grounds. I know no other details about the structures erected within the camp. Everything that was being built there, everything that happened—the Germans and the Ukrainian guards kept all of this a closely guarded secret from us. I was never able to visit that section of the camp where large numbers of people were later sent.

Now about the regimen of the Jewish construction workers during the camp's construction.

All of them, up to 300 of them, slept in barracks on the bare ground and rose for work at 5:00 a.m. Work continued until 12:00 p.m., then, after a half-hour break, until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m.

For the entire day of grueling labor, they received only one cup of coffee without milk each morning, soup (unpeeled potatoes boiled in water) for lunch, and whatever was left over from dinner in the evening. They received up to 200 grams of bread per day. Starving after the grueling, heavy labor, the men would violently push each other aside and, like madmen, rush into the dining room, eager for a better portion. Right there, the commandant and other Germans who had arrived by this time would beat the Jewish workers with whatever they could lay their hands on. I recall one incident when the commandant, in an attempt to "restore order," as they always explained their abuses, grabbed a large board lying near the kitchen and beat the Jews crowding around it with such force that the board shattered into pieces.

A Jew from Węgrów—I don't know his last name—a boy of about 17, dark-haired and clearly showing signs of exhaustion, couldn't bear the beating and fell unconscious. The commandant—I don't remember his last name because he was only in the camp for two construction months, June and July—stood by his side until he regained consciousness. And in front of everyone, as a form of "punishment," he ordered the exhausted young man to climb down a well to retrieve a bucket someone had lowered into it. The young man descended and fell to his death. With difficulty, they pulled him out, and as a "guilty" worker, by order of the commandant, he was taken to the forest and shot. Backbreaking labor, hunger, beatings, the most brutal insults, and the constant execution of those emaciated and unfit for labor—such was the regime, such was the working environment for Jewish workers during the camp's construction. The Germans insulted the national feelings of the Jews at every step they could.

They beat them with clubs for no apparent reason. They used any hard object, usually pine sticks, as clubs. Leather whips were widely used. A whip was an indispensable attribute of every German. The Germans shot all those who lost their last strength in the camp and were unable to continue working. At the end of June 1942, I personally witnessed the Germans taking about 100 Jews who had become incapacitated into the forest for execution. This group of Jews was escorted from the camp by up to 20 Germans and Ukrainian guards. All of them were armed with carbines. Each Jew carried a shovel. About an hour later, we heard three volleys of gunfire from the forest. An hour later, the Germans and Ukrainians returned from the forest. They were carrying shovels. Not a single Jew returned.

By the end of July, it was clear that construction of the main camp section was complete. The entire camp was surrounded by a barbed wire fence woven with pine branches.

A railway line was built right into the camp grounds. With the completion of the camp's construction, a change of commandant took place: Dr. Franz Ebert was appointed camp commandant. Along with him came Staff Sergeant Stady, deputy commandant; Untersturmführer Mecink, senior in the office; and Untersturmführer Schmidt, a driver. A little later, about a month later, Franz Kurt arrived as assistant camp commander, or, what was the same thing, commandant; Oberscharführer Sepp Post; and Untersturmführer August Mintzberger. From the end of July, a continuous stream of trains carrying the Jewish population began to arrive at the camp. The trains traveled along the fence near the section of the camp where the service personnel were housed and then entered the main camp grounds. I didn't see what was there. However, it was clearly visible how, almost every hour, a train of 10 to 15 cars, completely packed with Jews, approached the camp. The cars were closed. Small windows were left for air, and from behind the iron bars, distraught faces peered out.

Terrible, incessant screams emanated from the train cars. From the gestures of these people, it was clear they were asking what kind of death awaited them: firing squad or hanging.

A Jewish woman from Warsaw named Chesia later told me that the train from Warsaw to the camp took three days. Each car held about 250 people. There was no room to lie down, not even sit down. They weren't given any water for three days. They relieved themselves there, in the car. Children died. One dead child had to be thrown out of the moving car with special permission from the Germans. Chesia, driven by the lack of water, became so frantic that she gnawed through a blood vessel and drank her own blood. As I've already shown, for the first month, trains of 10-15 cars moved in an endless stream, replacing each other every hour. Subsequently, trains arrived regularly, but much less frequently—two or three per day.

The camp was where the Jewish population was transported from various countries of occupied Europe. I personally encountered Jews from Germany proper, as well as from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, Russia, Greece, and Belgium. It's important to note that a significant number of Jewish intellectuals were brought to the camp. For example, the famous Polish composer Gold Fock was held in the camp. I personally, quite by chance, had the opportunity to speak with a professor from Vienna. From conversations with the Jews themselves, I learned that some of them were brought from Bulgaria, some from Belgium, and some from Russia—the part of Russia that was then occupied. Some time after the camp began operating, its purpose as a kind of factory for the mass extermination of the Jewish population of all of occupied Europe became clear to me. Every day, during my entire year there, two, three, or four trains with train cars crammed with Jews arrived at the camp. Entire families were brought in. Among them were men and women, children and the elderly. No one left the camp. The smell of corpses and burning human flesh hung over the camp constantly. Clouds of smoke filled the sky almost daily. There was almost no fresh air in the camp area. The stench of corpses poisoned the air day and night. It was clear to everyone that people were being burned on these pyres. I wasn't in the main camp area, where this mass extermination of hundreds of thousands of people took place. But from the stories of individual Jews who were temporarily assigned to various jobs, I learned of this horrific, savage picture of human extermination. Two girls from Warsaw named Pola and Bronya told me the following: as soon as the train stopped at the camp grounds, the cars were immediately opened and everyone was asked to form a line. They were told that all personal belongings, including money and gold, were to be handed over for safekeeping. They were to keep one towel and prepare for the bathhouse. All the Jews complied with this order and formed a long line for the bathhouse. The Germans selected some young, attractive girls from this line and took them to the part of the camp where the camp staff offices were located. They were among these "chosen ones." When they asked a German why their mother hadn't been taken with them, he replied that she would return after the bathhouse. The girls never saw their mother again. In December 1942, I fell ill and was absent from the camp for two months. When I returned, I was immediately struck by the significant expansion of the camp's territory.

Not to mention that each of the many thousands of people who arrived at the camp lost their lives within a certain, often insignificant, time. During the limited time they were able to survive, they were subjected to a whole system of the most savage abuses. This began with the Germans, upon the arrival of each group, stopping at nothing to rob the Jews, taking all their personal belongings, money, and gold jewelry under various pretexts. Then, those who were immediately sent into this diabolical death machine suffered the most exquisite abuses.

The latrine window in the part of the camp where I was located looked directly onto the part of the camp where the Jewish barracks were located. It was one day in the spring of 1943. I heard screams and groans coming from the latrine next to these barracks. Looking out the window, I saw this: Untersturmführer Post and two Ukrainians were beating a middle-aged Jew with sticks and whips. The man was lying on a wooden couch, screaming and groaning after each blow. Post and the Ukrainians were relentlessly and savagely beating him all over his body, his head, his face. Blood began to flow from his mouth, nose, and ears. This didn't stop the executioners. They beat him until he died.

Camp Commandant Dr. Ebert repeatedly beat Jews with a whip before my eyes. He often drank, and his favorite spectacle then was watching young Jewish women dance under force. He would then erupt into a terrifying laugh, shout insultingly at them, and fire aimlessly from his pistol. Deputy Commandant Stadi had his own methodical beating procedure, devised by himself. He would summon everyone who had "offended" in any way during the day and, along with other Germans, beat them with whips. Jews from the all-work detachment repeatedly told me about this. Franz Kurt arrived at the camp around September or October 1942. He always acted as a substitute for the commandant when he was away, despite not having an officer's rank. By the spring of 1943, he had risen to the rank of officer and in May was appointed commandant. Kurt was known for his ferocity. His room was in the same barracks where I lived. He often brought Jews to his room and beat them. He always loved to walk with his bulldog. This dog was specially trained: whenever he started beating a Jew, the dog would immediately pounce and bite. Groans and screams were often heard coming from Kurt's room. That's all I could tell you about them—the Germans who ran the camp. It must be kept in mind, however, that I had no access to the part of the camp where the Germans' main professional activity took place—the murder of thousands of people. All the Germans serving in the camp belonged to the SS. Representatives of the highest fascist command visited the camp on numerous occasions. In the summer of 1943, a general came, reportedly from Lublin. Someone came and went from Berlin every two weeks, each time taking a large iron box. It seems to me that the contents were nothing but gold.

On August 3, 1943, the Jews held in the camp revolted. At 4:00 PM, while in the kitchen, I heard gunfire coming from the main camp area. The sporadic shooting grew louder. Confusion broke out in the camp. I ran out of the barracks with the Ukrainians and rushed for the exit, but the guards blocked my path. Before my eyes, some Jews still managed to escape. The Germans and the guards brutally shot all the Jews in the camp at the time. Those who were not fatally wounded were finished off by the guards with an axe blow to the head. Thus, from what I could see, at least five Jews were killed. The revolt was suppressed. Most of the Jews were shot. The rest were taken to the Lublin camp. It should be noted that immediately after the revolt in August, I was dismissed from my job at the camp. The last batch of Jews was sent to Lublin in November. Therefore, I can’t say anything about what happened after I left the camp.

Question: What conversation did you have and what signature did you give when you began working at the camp?

Answer: In late June or early July 1942, that is, after a month spent in Treblinka Camp No. 2, I was summoned to the camp office by Unterscharführer Metzink. Commandant Dr. Ebert, Staff Sergeant Stady, Metzink, and Zosia Mitovskaya were in the office when I arrived. As soon as I entered, Mitovskaya called me in and told me I had to sign a secrecy agreement. I asked Mitovskaya to read me the printed text of the agreement. She spoke German fluently and read it to me. The literal content of the agreement obligated me to maintain the secrecy of everything I had seen or known about the camp. Standing there, Ebert, Metzink, and Stadi verbally repeated the warning about maintaining the secret and the risk of their lives if they disclosed it. I signed a written agreement.

I have nothing more to add. This is written down accurately from my words and was read to me [signature/].

Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Senior Lieutenant of Justice [signature/]

Interrogation protocol of Abram Goldfarb, who worked on the team transporting corpses from the Treblinka gas chambers. Village of Kosów Lacki, September 21, 1944.

The city of Kosów, September 21, 1944. Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, military investigator of the 65th Army's Military Prosecutor's Office, interrogated the following witness, who testified:

Abram Isaakovich Goldfarb, born in 1909, native of Szczuczyn, Szczuczyn County, Białystok Voivodeship, resident of Szczuczyn, Jewish, shoemaker.

Having been warned of liability for retracting testimony and for giving false testimony, he stated the following:

My permanent place of residence was the city of Szczuczyn, Białystok Voivodeship.

On September 7, 1939, German troops occupied my village, and on September 9, I was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp—the village of Terpen, Belev district, East Prussia. I remained there until November 1940, when I was transferred to the Bela Podlaskie camp for civilian Jews.

I spent only two weeks in this camp and was released due to illness. Unable to reach my family, I remained in Mięziżec Podlaski until August 17, 1942. On the night of August 17–18, I was awakened by the sound of random rifle and machine gun fire in the streets. This continued until the morning. I was completely unaware of what was happening in the city. Early in the morning, some boys ran from the yard and reported that the Germans were evicting the Jewish population from the city. Many different rumors were circulating: some said they would be taken to Ukraine, others – deep into Poland, and so on. At 7 a.m., a policeman, an ethnic Ukrainian, came to my apartment and ordered me to grab the necessary things and go to the city square.

By the time I arrived, about 18,000 Jews had already gathered in the square. The Germans selected 4,000 specialists from this mass and allowed them to remain in the city, while the rest of us were marched to the train station square. Many were missing when we boarded the train. In the city square, as well as along the way to the train station, the German gendarmes shot anyone for the slightest sign of fatigue or physical illness. Up to 300 people, mostly elderly, were executed in this way. On Lyublinskaya Street, we witnessed the Germans throw a small infant out of a second-story window. The German gendarmes opened fire on the parents who ran to the child. Until the very moment we boarded the train, the gendarmes—up to 400 of them, including Ukrainian police officers—beat the people marching in the column with whips for any, even the most trivial, provocation. On August 18th, a train of about 80 cars arrived. The cars were packed to capacity. Suffice it to say, there were 215 people in my car. Under these conditions, it was impossible to lie down, let alone even sit down. The doors were immediately locked from the outside as soon as we boarded the carriage. Air came in only through eight small windows, which were actually designed for birds. We left the town of Menzizhets at 11 a.m. on August 18th. We arrived at Treblinka station at 5 a.m. on August 19th. We were forced to stand around the entire time. Not only were we denied food and water, but any attempt to get water was also stopped by shooting on the spot, and everyone had to relieve themselves in the same carriage. There was such an incident in our carriage. At Małkinia station, a seven-year-old boy climbed out of a carriage window. He managed to get water once, but when he tried to get it again, a German gendarme shot him. This was not an isolated incident. Many corpses could be seen on the railway tracks.

To our endless questions about our fate, the Germans accompanying us told us they were taking us to Ukraine, where a completely separate city had been set aside for Jews. This is what they told us in Medzizhets, this is what they told us at Małkinia station. From Małkinia station, a separate railway line ran to the Treblinka camp. As we approached the camp, we noticed a wooden fence, 2-3 meters high. Three rows of wire were attached to the wooden fence, at a slight angle to the fence. The Germans' diabolical plan to exterminate Jews immediately began to manifest itself. From Małkinia station, our transport consisted of not 80 cars, but 20. The remaining 60 were temporarily abandoned at Małkinia station until the first 20 cars were unloaded. And when the doors of the cars were opened at the Treblinka camp station, it turned out that 50-100 people in nine of the cars had died en route. In the remaining 11 carriages, almost everyone died of suffocation. Many of the bodies, however, bore traces of gunshot wounds—the work of the gendarmes en route. In our carriage, for example, because it had eight windows (it was adapted for transporting birds), the mortality rate was relatively low—15 people, all from suffocation.

It's important to note that many of the corpses with gunshot wounds were particularly swollen and blackened in the areas where the wounds had originated. In one of the carriages, only one person remained alive—Leib Charny from Medzizhets. He was brought back to consciousness with difficulty. He recounted that after the gendarmerie fired on the carriage, not only those who had sustained any wounds died, but everyone else as well. He claimed that the poisonous gases in the bullets had this devastating effect. Once a bullet had struck a person, it caused swelling and blackening of the infected area.

Everyone was asked to go out onto the platform. Jews who had arrived before us were walking along it. There were also numerous corpses lying nearby. I'm at a loss to estimate their number, but I can say one thing: we were stunned by the whole scene.

The women, children, and elderly people were separated from us and taken away. We never saw them again. The younger men were added to a group of Jews working in the camp at the time of our arrival, and we were all given the task of dragging corpses from the train cars onto the platform. From there, they were loaded onto carts, which then took them to the field. At the time, an excavator was digging three enormous pits there. The Germans, observing our work, periodically fired at the workers from various directions, as if jokingly. After this horrific "amusement" of the Germans and Ukrainian guards, by evening only 40 of the 120 Jews working on the platform remained. The next day, we carried the corpses to the pits. Yakov Vernik, later the author of the brochure "A Year in Treblinka," was also involved in this process of carrying corpses. The work of moving corpses from various locations to the pits continued for four days. After this work was completed, all the Jews held in the camp were gathered in the field at night for a roll call. This refers exclusively to men, as everyone else was taken to the bathhouse on the very first day and never returned. 980 people were gathered for [illegible]. Almost all were men. The exception were 25 young women selected by the Germans. From the total of 980, a group of 80 different specialists was selected, and then Scharführer Max Miller asked everyone who spoke German. Forty responded. All of them were brought to the pits that same night and shot. The rest were given various tasks, including a significant group sorting through the personal belongings taken from the Jews who had arrived at the camp.

Max Miller, addressing the assembled Jews, constantly called on the latter to hand over all their personal belongings, money and gold for safekeeping under the pretext that they, the owners of these valuables, would have a rich future.

A week after my arrival at the camp, I was assigned with 32 other prisoners to work on the construction of a building containing the cabins in which people were subsequently killed. By the time I arrived, the camp already had a building containing three cabins for killing people. The building was located in the forest, 200 meters from the Treblinka station platform. The approach to the building was protected by a barbed wire fence, into which pine branches were woven for camouflage. The building itself was an ordinary one-story brick structure with a metal roof. As you ascended the entrance staircase, you first entered a wooden annex, resembling a corridor. Both the entrance door to the building and the three iron doors leading from this annex to the three cells in the building were hermetically sealed. Each of the three cells had the following dimensions: length – 5, width – 4, height – 2 meters. The floor and walls were tiled, the ceiling was cement.

Each cell has a single hole in the ceiling, covered with mesh. A pipe with a distinctive bell-shaped mouth and a mesh bottom extends from the wall into the cell. The bell-shaped mouth is mounted almost against the wall. The wall at this point is heavily soiled with soot. Opposite the entrance door is a hermetically sealed exit door. All three doors in these cells open toward a concrete ramp installed right next to the building. This is a brief static description of this building. Since one night in mid-September, I was assigned with a group of prisoners to remove the bodies of murdered people from this building, I can say something about the method of this killing. Each of these cells was exceptionally densely packed with corpses. Both the cells themselves and the corpses reeked of the exhaust fumes from the flammable mixture. Most of the victims had copious traces of bloody discharge coming from their nasopharynxes. At first, a narrow-gauge railway was built to the building, along which we transported corpses on carts to the pits. Regarding the structure of the building and the mechanics of extermination, it's crucial to note that an ordinary tractor engine was installed in an extension to the building, which was used for two purposes: when the chambers were filled with people, and for lighting purposes. Furthermore, a single exhaust pipe from this generator, carrying exhaust gases, was run through the attic into the building to each chamber, and, as I've already shown, the gases exited through a bell in each chamber.

Another pipe from the generator exited directly to the street. This is clear: when the engine was used for killing people, gases were introduced through a system of pipes into the chambers, but when its primary purpose was to power the electrical grid, the gases exited directly to the outside.

There were two guards working at the engine.

The first was Ivan, known in the camp as "Ivan the Terrible." He was a man of above-average height, with dark hair, about 27 or 28 years old. The name "Terrible," which he was given, was no accident. His cruelty probably surpassed many Germans. I remember one such incident: I was working at the time carrying corpses. Ivan called over a Jewish man from our group and, in front of everyone, cut off his ear with his saber. As a mockery, he handed the severed ear to the Jew. An hour later, he shot the Jew. I also remember another incident: he killed one of our workers with a blow to the head with a metal rod.

While I was busy carrying corpses from the cells to the pit, a horrific scene of mutilation unfolded. In addition to the gas poisoning in these cells, many had their ears, noses, and other organs cut off, including breasts in the women. Thus, the sophisticated method of gassing was complemented by the physical agony of the mutilation inflicted upon them before death.

The second worker, Nikolai, was short, with broad, seemingly hunched shoulders, brown-haired, and 32 years old. He had a noticeable tattoo on one arm. He played an equal part in the atrocities committed by Ivan and the Germans who came to the building.

Now I turn to the construction of the new building for killing people, which means I'm returning to where I began the story about the old building. The new building was built 20 meters from the old one. 120 Jewish workers were employed on the construction. A German engineer-scharführer, whose name I don't know, supervised the construction. Construction lasted from the end of August and was completed in late November 1942. The new building—the "gas chamber"—differed from the old one only in size. It was significantly larger. It was also a single-story brick structure. There were no wooden outbuildings. The road leading from Camp No. 1 to our Camp No. 2 approached the building. The building had a barbed wire fence with pine branches woven into it. The entrance to the building itself was somewhat reminiscent of a religious institution: the Sign of David—a six-pointed star—was installed on the roof, with a peculiar altar on either side.

Everything was decorated with flowers. So from the outside, no one could have guessed that this enticing facility was a gas chamber. Climbing the steps, you enter a long corridor, with five cells to the right and five to the left, the only difference being that on the left side, next to the last cell, is a small room for the motor.

The cells were connected to the corridor by doors lined with cotton wool and cloth and sealed hermetically. Light fell on the corridor from windows cut into the roof itself. Each cell was roughly square: 6 square meters and 2 meters high. The walls were plastered, the floor cement. Light was supplied to the cells through windows set into the roof. A small round hole, a peephole, was cut into the wall of the corridor, allowing observation of the cell from the corridor. Opposite the entrance door was the exit door, which opened not to the side, but from the bottom up, and was supported by special brackets. Each door had a concrete ramp on which the corpses were stacked for transport. People were poisoned in the same manner as in the first building. Pipes carrying exhaust gases from the motor ran along the corridor to the cells. One such pipe was connected to each cell. A separate opening in the roof allowed the gas to escape from the cell. However, when the gas chamber first began operating, it turned out the motor couldn't supply enough gas to all 10 chambers. It only lasted for the first two.

Then, while the engine was being repaired, another, even more painful, method of extermination was employed. A significant quantity of chlorinated lime was urgently delivered to the building. A certain amount of chlorinated lime was left wet in a chamber, which was hermetically sealed. This process of poisoning the occupants was incomparably longer, and therefore more painful. People were kept in the chambers for 24 hours, and even then, some sometimes remained alive. Since the chambers' capacity fully met the "requirements," this relatively inexpensive method of extermination was used throughout the winter. The engine was put into operation in April 1943. It was serviced by a German named Tomasz, along with the already infamous Ivan and Nikolai.

Thus, hundreds of thousands of people were killed by poisoning them with exhaust gas. Two specially equipped buildings were constructed for this purpose under the supervision of German engineers.

All the time, I had to work not in the section where the work team was busy receiving incoming trains and sorting the clothing and personal belongings confiscated from those arriving, but in the second section, where people were brought naked to the so-called "bathhouse." My main job consisted of carrying corpses from the cells to the pits in the field. The first section was separated from the second by a barbed fence, and workers from the second section were not allowed into the first section. This also applied to the Jewish workers of the first section, who were not allowed to join us. I knew, of course, that several trains carrying Jewish families arrived at the camp daily. I knew that they were stripped naked, having all their personal belongings, money, and gold confiscated, because they were brought to the cells stripped of clothing and without personal belongings. Many came to the "bathhouse" with towels, because they were persistently assured that after visiting the bathhouse, they would receive all their belongings and be able to go to Ukraine. At first, the situation was such that people began to believe it. But this first stage of their stay in the camp belonged to the first section, and I am not familiar with all the details associated with this initial period of their stay in the camp.

As I've already shown, my job was to transport corpses from the "bathhouse" gas chambers to the pits. Between 200 and 300 Jewish prisoners in the camp were involved in carrying and transporting corpses. Some of us carried corpses from the cells to the ramps. Others carried corpses on stretchers to the fields and deposited them in the pits. It's difficult for me to estimate the number of people killed in the camps. An average of 5,000 people were killed daily. Some days, transports of 1,000 people arrived, while others reached 10,000 and 15,000. Aside from a limited number of people temporarily retained for menial labor, everyone else was killed on the day of their arrival at the camp. By February, 21 pits had been dug in the camp where corpses were deposited.

Characteristically, until February 1943, corpses were piled in batches into pits, covered with a light layer of earth, and then doused with a chlorinated lime solution to suppress the stench of death. But this was futile, as the pits held such a huge number of corpses that nothing could prevent the stench. In February, camp authorities made their first attempt at cremating the corpses. A special pit was dug for this purpose. Rails were laid on supports at intervals at the bottom of the pit. Firewood was placed under the rails, a few pine branches were thrown onto them, and the corpses were piled on top. Up to five bellows were positioned to pump air. The wood was doused with gasoline, the bellows were activated, and thus the mass cremation took place.

However, this first experiment wasn't entirely successful. The problem was that they dug deep pits for these ovens, significantly restricting the air flow. Bellows weren't entirely satisfactory in this regard. Under these conditions, the burning of corpses took a long time. A Scharführer arrived from another camp and conducted a further experiment. He set up the same primitive rail oven not in a pit, but on the ground, in an open field. The effect of this change was exceptional. No bellows were required. The air flow proved to be quite adequate. He made another "improvement": the corpses didn't die in large numbers, but rather sparser. Otherwise, the oven design remained the same. After his departure, I witnessed the construction of five large and one small such ovens. They were placed near the pits.

From March 1943 until the first half of July, the methodical burning of all newly arrived corpses and bodies stored in 14 large pits took place. By the end of July, they had managed to dig another pit, and the bodies from it were cremated.

Thus, by the day of the prisoner uprising on August 2, the bodies in 15 pits had been burned. Six pits remained untouched.

To imagine this enormous mass of murdered and burned people, suffice it to say that the smallest pit contained at least 100,000 corpses.

Question: Which Germans who served in the camp do you personally know, and what can you say about their criminal activities?

Answer: When I arrived at the camp, it was in August 1942. There were 47 German service personnel and 150 Ukrainian guards. During the first two months of my stay in the camp, the commandant was a Hauptsturmführer, a man of 40 years old, of average height, with dark hair and a bald head, and wore horn-rimmed glasses. He was with us for a short time, and I don’t know his last name. He was replaced by Untersturmführer Dr. Ebert, who later received the rank of Hauptmann. His deputy was Scharführer Franz Kurt, who, at the same time as Ebert, was promoted to Untersturmführer. Ebert rarely visited us. He came once and, warming his hands over the fire, muttered: “It’s good to warm yourself with Jewish blood.” He himself did not beat any of us. For this purpose, he used the services of his subordinates. Franz Kurt often came to roll call. He usually showed up with his big dog. He loved to set the dog on one of us in our presence and shout, "Human, bite the dog." In this case, he considered the dog to be the human.

I remember one time, as he approached us, he gave the command, "Hats off your heads." Several of us, in his opinion, were slow to respond. He then proceeded to box them one by one. He ordered the beaten and nearly unconscious prisoners to follow him to the infirmary, where they were shot that same day.

In December 1942, when the first snow fell, seven prisoners escaped from the camp. Four of them were captured. Franz Kurt summoned the guard, Ivan, and in the presence of the workers standing outside the barracks, ordered him to do whatever he wanted to them. They killed the first one. Ivan drove a nail into the head of the second, and cut off the ears of the third. After that, the last two and the fourth were hanged right there in full view of everyone. Franz Kurt set a dog on one worker standing by the fire, which tore at his body. Franz, watching this scene, laughed ominously and loudly. It should be said that the main atrocities committed by the Germans against prisoners took place on the premises of the 1st Section. Therefore, unfortunately, I cannot tell you much about them.

The cremation of the corpses was supervised by Unterscharführer Gense and Unterscharführer <Lestler?>. Both were responsible for the operation of the ovens in which hundreds of thousands of people were burned.

In the gas chamber itself, Sergeant Adolf, an elderly man of about 50-60, a doctor by training, broad and broad-shouldered, and Second Unterscharführer Gustav, a tall man of about 45, worked. They supervised the entry of people into the so-called "baths." They also displayed exceptional cruelty toward the helpless. They were especially skilled with whips. During my stay in the camp, a commission of high-ranking Nazi officials visited three times. Where they came from, or who personally came, I don't know.

Jews were brought to our camp, as far as I know, from Prussia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the occupied part of Russia. A significant number of intellectuals were among them. I don’t know the names of individuals, because while working in the 2nd department, I had contact not with living people, but with corpses.

Question: Tell us about the prisoner revolt of August 2, 1943.

Answer: In April 1943, the idea of preparing for a prisoner uprising first arose. The time for the uprising was set for May. By May, they had managed to steal grenades from a German warehouse. They were unable to find fuses. This was clearly insufficient. The leaders of the uprising, primarily representatives of the Jewish intelligentsia in the 1st Section, told us to be ready for the uprising. They promised to give us some weapons at the right moment. Shovels and knives were to be our main weapons. On the morning of August 2, we were notified from the 1st Section that the uprising was scheduled for 4:30 PM. At 3:30 PM, the Jewish workers of the 2nd Section went out into the field near the pits, singing. The songs were a sign that we were ready.

We set to work. Suddenly, shots and explosions were heard from the 1st section. Hearing this, a young man from Warsaw, Mendel Spiegelman, hit the guard on the head with a stick. The guard dropped his weapon. Taking advantage of this, Spiegelman snatched up a carbine and handed it to our guide, a Czech Jew named Żelo. He shot three guards and one senior guard guarding the barracks. Our men dismantled their rifles. Some were tearing down the fence at the same time. 285 men from the 2nd section escaped. Even more from the 1st. I fled into the forest and hid there until the territory was liberated by the Red Army.

I can't add anything more. This has been written down accurately from my words and was read to me /signature/.

Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Senior Lieutenant of Justice /signature/

Plan of the "small" gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp, attached to the testimony of A. Goldfarb

Plan of the main gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp, attached to A. Goldfarb's testimony

Interrogation protocol of Janina Pawlowska regarding the functioning of the Treblinka labor camp. [The village of Kosów Lacki], September 22, 1944.

On September 22, 1944, the military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness

1. Last name, first name, patronymic: Pawlowska Janina Aleksandrovna
2. Year of birth: 1916
3. Place of birth: village of Tosie, Sokołów district, Warsaw Voivodeship
4. Nationality: Polish
5. Social status: servant
6. Education: 7th grade
7. Place of residence: city of Kosów

I have been warned of liability for giving false testimony under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR /signature/.

The interrogation was conducted through an interpreter, Vladislav Sokha, a resident of Kosów, who has been warned of liability for false translation /signature/.

In April 1943, the Germans captured me and offered me a job at the Treblinka labor camp, and if I refused, they would send me to Prussia. Since I didn't want to go to Germany, I agreed and was brought to the Treblinka labor camp, where I was forced to work as a cleaner in the kitchen where the SS ate. The kitchen was not located in the camp itself, but separately, along with the living quarters of the SS, the guards, and the bakery. All these premises were about a hundred meters from the camp and were surrounded by barbed wire. We were not allowed to enter the camp grounds, and I never went there, and we were even forbidden to approach the camp, so I didn't see much of what was going on in the camp. Several hundred Jews and Poles worked at the labor camp. The majority, mainly Jews, worked in a sand quarry, digging sand and transporting it to the Małkinia station, where a bridge was being built. The sand quarry was at the other end of the camp, so we couldn't see what was going on there, but we could often hear screams and shots from there, and 10-12 corpses, often mutilated, were carried past us every day.

I didn't see executions or mass beatings of prisoners, but I did see prisoners being flogged, which was common. They were often beaten to death, carried out by SS men and guards.

All the SS guards, guards, and camp administration lived in houses near the kitchen, and I witnessed the administration frequently holding drinking parties and hearing music there. I never saw women in these houses, and they were forbidden from entering the kitchen and living quarters. I don't know what happened during these drinking parties. I do know, however, that once, during a drinking party, a famous Polish pianist—I don't remember his name—was brought in and played for them all night. I heard that the musician was gone the next morning, and they said he had been killed. The guards and SS never told us what was going on in the camp, but Jews who came from the camp to work in the kitchen reported that the prisoners were treated very cruelly, beaten with whips, sticks, shovels, and axes, and that Jews who became too weak to work were killed—and there were many of them, as the work was very hard. They worked from morning until late at night without a break, and the food they gave them was so bad that even cattle wouldn't eat it. I heard that in the morning, the prisoners were given only coffee, and in the afternoon, soup made from a single unpeeled, dirty potato or rutabaga boiled in water. So, after working for several weeks, a prisoner would become completely exhausted and would be beaten. I heard the following story from Jews who were later killed. One day, six prisoners with one guard went to work in the forest, where, taking advantage of the lax guard, the prisoners killed the guard and fled into the forest, where they hid. For this, on the orders of Hauptsturmführer Theo Eupen, a large group of Jews was rounded up—I don't know how many—and then the SS men and guards were told they could beat the Jews with whatever they wanted, and so they killed all the Jews with sticks, shovels, axes, and knives. I don't know what month this was, but I wasn't in the camp at the time.

Question: Are you aware of a case where, on camp orders, 30 women were selected from among the arriving women, handed over to the SS, who raped them and then killed them?

Answer: In the summer of 1943—I don't remember the month—a large group of women was brought to the camp, 30 of whom were selected, and the rest were sent to a "death camp." I don't know what happened to these 30 women.

Question: What do you know about Camp No. 2, the "death camp?"

Answer: I don't know what happened in the "death camp." From conversations between Jews and guards, I heard that Jews were gassed with some kind of gas and then burned. I personally witnessed how, starting around September 1942, for almost a year, columns of black smoke rose day and night above the "death camp," and at night, the glow of fire could be seen for many kilometers. The terrible smell of burnt flesh and corpses spread far from the camp. Several trains carrying Jews arrived at the "death camp" every day.

Question: Tell me, who do you know from the camp leaders, their last name, first name, age and demographic data?

Answer:

1. Camp Commander Hauptsturmführer Theo Eupen – German, approximately 37 years old, bald, tall, strong build, bulging eyes. No distinguishing features.
2. Untersturmführer Karl Preifi – German, tall, thin, bald, with false upper teeth.
3. Untersturmführer Schwarz – German, black, tall, black hair. No distinguishing features.
4. Unterschaftführer Leo Lanz – head of the workshops, German, former carpenter, hunched over, elderly, tall, blond.
5. Rottenführer Weissmann – German, blond, about 35 years old, tall, plump, round-faced, red-faced. In charge of all subsidiary agricultural farming in the camp.
6. Unterschaftführer Stumpe – German, tall, thin, round-faced, dark hair, about 30-34 years old, head of the guards.
7. Unterschaftführer Hagen – German, about 35 years old, medium height, plump, black, black hair. Everyone called him "Baby" for his dignified, feminine gait.
8. Vakhman Olshanikov – Ukrainian, about 22 years old, tall, medium build, dark hair. No distinguishing features.
9. Vakhman Stieben – a German from Russia, about 25 years old, short, strong build, dark hair, suffered from smallpox, traces of which remained on his face.

I don't remember the other people's names now.

Question: Until what time were you in the camp, and how did you leave?

Answer: I was in the camp until June 1944. In June, due to the hard work, I overexerted myself, and they released me from the camp.

Question: Are you aware of a case of escape from the camp?

Answer: Yes. I know of one; it happened in September 1943, when four bakers—I don't know their names, one named Wolf—took advantage of the lax guards and escaped at night. They searched for them for a long time, but were never found. After that, our guards were tightened. I can't tell you anything else.

The protocol has been written down and translated from my words correctly and read to me /signature/.

Translated from Polish to Russian /signature/

Interrogated by: Military Investigator, Guard Senior Lieutenant of Justice /signature/

Interrogation protocol of Wolf Szejnberg regarding German atrocities in the Treblinka labor camp, September 22, 1944.

On September 22, 1944, military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness

1. Last name, first name, patronymic: Szejnberg Wolf
2. Year of birth: 1902
3. Place of birth: Warsaw
4. Nationality: Jewish
5. Social status: worker
6. Education: 8th grade
7. Place of residence: Warsaw, Bugay Street, No. 8

I have been warned of liability for giving false testimony under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR /signature/.

I was born and have lived my entire life in Warsaw. From the very first days of the German occupation of Poland, the persecution of Jews and their systematic extermination as a mixed-race race began. All Jews living in Poland were exiled from their places of residence and brought to Warsaw, where a section of the city was set aside for them, isolated from the rest of the city and surrounded by a wall. It was a veritable concentration camp with unbearable living conditions. Terror, beatings, and executions of Jews reigned everywhere. I myself repeatedly witnessed how the Germans shot Jews right on the streets in groups of 50-100 people. They were forced to work enormously, and there was no pay for it. The hunger was horrific. People walked the streets collecting potato peelings, compounded by epidemics of typhus and dysentery, resulting in a daily death rate among Jews of 450–500. Walking along the streets, one could often see bloated human corpses lying on the sidewalks. At the end of July 1942, the Jews were informed that they would all be resettled to Ukraine, where there was plenty of work and where they would live well. And from July 27, 1942, several trains departed Warsaw daily. Each train consisted of 60–70 cars, some of which held up to 170 people—men, women, and children—each.

Several times I witnessed the loading of Jews into train cars. The gathering of Jews and their loading was accompanied by beatings with whips and shootings. At first, Jews working in German factories were not touched, and I, as a worker in a German carpentry factory, lived in Warsaw until September 1942. Subsequently, they began to deport all workers without exception, and on September 3, 1942, a group of Germans arrived at the factory, selected all the Jews and drove them straight from the factory, not allowing them to go home and say goodbye to their families or take their belongings, straight to the station. They gathered more than 10,000 of us. There were women, children, and old people. We were accompanied by SS men and Ukrainian guards, all armed and carrying whips, with which they beat people. Several hundred of this group were shot while we were being led to the train, and the entire road was awash with blood, with the corpses of men, women, and children strewn everywhere. At the station where we were taken, I saw a large train of about 80 freight cars, to which we were led. Once we reached the train, they quickly began herding us into the cars, accompanied by beatings. At least 170 people were herded into the car I was in. There were old people, women, and children. The crying was unbearable. Given the large number of people, it was impossible to even sit in the car, and people suffocated from lack of air, as all the doors and windows had been closed after loading. Afterwards, the train maneuvered for a long time along the tracks, which was done so that even people familiar with the Warsaw Junction could not figure out which way they were being taken.

This continued until nightfall, and we left at nightfall and arrived at Treblinka station in the morning. The entire journey we were not allowed to open the doors. The heat was terribly intense, people were dying of thirst, and they weren't given a drop of water. The guards accompanying the train demanded gold and valuables for water, and the thirsty people gave everything they had to have a sip of water. But the guards, having taken the gold and other things, didn't give them any water, only laughed. Such terrible conditions led to many Jews dying en route. Thus, when I was already working in the camp, they brought us some Jews to work; I don't remember their names; they were brought from the town of Siedlce. They said they were traveling on a train coming from the city of Radom. The train took three days to reach Treblinka station. During this time, the cars were never opened, and the people were given no food. People in the carriages were suffocating, and when they began to unload the train in the camp, out of several thousand people traveling in the train, only dozens remained alive, and it took several hours to unload corpses from the carriages.

Our train, leaving the train station along a railway line, turned aside, and after a while we entered an area fenced with barbed wire up to 3 meters high and camouflaged by fir trees. As I later learned, we had arrived at Camp No. 2, or "death camp." The train pulled up to a ramp resembling a railway ramp, designed to make it easier to exit the cars. The cars were quickly opened, and everyone was ordered to vacate within five minutes. We emerged onto the square, and the first thing I saw was a sign pointing in the direction that read "Bathhouse." The bathhouse itself was invisible, as it was fenced with barbed wire and camouflaged by branches.

Not far from the train in the square, there was a pile of various objects up to 10 meters high, and to the right of the pile were about 1,000 Jews, completely naked. There I met a Jewish acquaintance from Warsaw named Moselmann—a dentist—whom I asked what this meant. He simply shook his head and said, "To live." I looked in the direction he pointed and saw that they were selecting people somewhere. When I approached, I learned that they were selecting healthy Jews for work in Camp No. 1, the "labor camp." When they started asking if there was a cook, I replied that I was a cook, and they hired me.

They selected a group of 300 of us and immediately took us to Camp No. 1. Thus, I was fortunate enough to escape death, as I later learned from conversations with guards that all Jews arriving at Camp No. 2 were herded into a "bathhouse" where they were suffocated. Camp No. 1 was located about 2 kilometers from Camp No. 2. On the camp gate hung a board with the inscription in German "Arbeitslager Treblinka" (i.e., "Treblinka Labor Camp"). Upon arrival at the camp, we were all lined up and again asked about our specialties. A Jewish acquaintance of mine, Lomag, who had arrived at the camp earlier, told me to identify myself as a cook, as the camp needed a cook. Thus, I became a cook in the camp. After being assigned, about 1,400 of us were herded into a barracks designed for 300 people, where we were to live. The entire barracks was filled with 2.5x2.5 meter bunks, each of which could accommodate about 30 people, sleeping one on top of the other. All the Jews were divided into specialties and worked in shoemaking, carpentry, sewing, and other workshops located in the camp. About 500 people were employed in this work. The majority were laborers and worked in the sand quarry, where they loaded sand onto train cars arriving from Camp No. 2 after unloading people there. The sand-laden cars were sent to the Małkinia station, where they built an embankment and a bridge.

I worked as a cook for nine months, and then, after a bakery was built outside the camp, I worked there as a baker until the escape.

Question: What did the prisoners eat?

Answer: While working in the kitchen, I saw how food was prepared. For the unskilled laborers, only coffee was prepared in the morning, soup made from unpeeled, dirty potatoes or rutabagas in the afternoon, and occasionally a little meat from dead horses discarded by peasants in the surrounding villages. In the evening, coffee was also the only ration. The daily bread allowance was only 200 grams. The food was so poor that a worker who spent two or three weeks in the camp would become completely weak and unable to work, after which he would be killed. The food for specialized workers was slightly better.

Working conditions were appalling; workers were forced to work for 10 to 15 hours without a moment's rest, and if they stopped working for even a minute, they were immediately mercilessly beaten with whips, sticks, shovels, and other weapons.

Loading sand was particularly difficult, and anyone who found themselves there could assume they would never live, for they would be shot or beaten to death. For the slightest offense, and most often for no apparent reason, prisoners were beaten with sticks, 25 to 50 times. Few could withstand 50 blows. If someone did, they were doused with water and beaten again until they died. Such scenes often unfolded before my eyes. A common method of killing prisoners was with a hammer: the prisoner was asked to bow his head, and when he did, he was killed with a hammer blow to the back of the head. Murder and beatings followed at every step; prisoners were killed and beaten because they couldn't work because the guard didn't like them. Those who weakened were killed on the spot, right in front of the others. Workers working on the bridge construction were treated particularly cruelly, as at least 20 bodies of tortured and murdered prisoners were brought in every day.

Thus, at least 100 people were exterminated in the camp daily. Furthermore, as a cook, I prepared food daily for the quantity assigned by headquarters for that day. I would see, for example, that one day food was prepared for 1,400 people, but the next morning they'd give me a figure of 1,000, since the remaining 400 had been exterminated that day. According to my rough estimates, during my nine months as a cook, up to 100,000 people were exterminated. I remember the extermination of prisoners most vividly:

1. On November 9, 1942, six prisoners and one guard went into the forest to work, where, taking advantage of the fact that they were guarded by only one man, they killed the guard, took his rifle, and disappeared. When news of this came to light in the camp, 110 prisoners were selected and taken behind a barbed wire fence. Then nine SS men and 100 guards, taking up shovels, axes, sticks, knives—whoever liked to kill with whatever—entered behind the fence and began a horrific beating of the defenseless people. The prisoners were beaten with sticks, chopped into pieces with axes and shovels, and slashed with knives. The ground was covered in blood, pieces of flesh and human entrails lay scattered everywhere, bones could be heard breaking from the blows, and in places, shapeless heaps of human flesh still moved on the ground. Heart-rending screams echoed over the camp, unable to be drowned out by the song sung by the SS men and guards as they exterminated the people. I remember a few words from the song; translated into Russian, they meant something like, "Let Jewish blood flow down the knife."

When the beating was over, it was difficult to recognize the people. They were just pieces of meat. And the SS men and guards, covered from head to toe in human blood, grinned smugly.

2. I witnessed numerous mass shootings of prisoners by drunken SS men and guards, and Hauptsturmführer van Eupen led the charge. The drunken mob would approach a barracks where prisoners were resting, open the door, and begin shooting indiscriminately, killing 50-100 people. I witnessed this myself three times.

3. In June 1943, van Eupen brought about 1,500 Jewish women from Warsaw, of whom 30 of the most beautiful were selected. The rest were stripped of their valuables and sent to Camp No. 2, where they were exterminated in the "bathhouse."

Von Eupen distributed the 30 Jewish women he retained to the SS men, and the drinking, rape, and abuse of women and girls continued for a whole week, after which they were all killed.

4. I once witnessed Unterschaftführer Schwarz and Preifi bet that Preifi could hit a man in the heart at a distance of 50 meters. To do this, they went out onto the street where the prisoners were working and waited for one of the workers to turn his chest towards them. When one young Jew did turn around while working, Preifi killed him with a pistol shot. Or another incident: one day the workers were going to work after lunch. An elderly, sick Jew approached Preifi and asked to be excused from work until the morning. To which Preifi, smiling, said: "You're weak, give me a shovel," and, taking the shovel from the Jew, with a powerful blow he severed the prisoner's head all the way to the neck. In January 1943, Preifi once noticed that one prisoner, after lunch, was moving his jaws as he went to work. Preifi walked up to the prisoner and said, "What are you eating, open your mouth," and when the prisoner did so, Preifi shot him in the mouth.

Preifi also had other frequent amusements. The window of his room overlooked the side where the prisoners worked, and when a group of them converged on the work, Preifi would take his machine gun and fire a long burst from the window, sometimes killing several dozen people.

5. In mid-August 1943, during another drinking binge, von Eupen decided to go horseback riding. He placed his four-year-old son, who had been brought to him at the camp that day, on his lap, and rode through the camp. At that moment, a large group of women were returning from work. Seeing them, van Eupen revved up his horse and slammed into the group, running them over, crushing more than 10 women. In addition, several dozen women who tried to escape were shot by guards.

Then, on May 5, 1943, van Eupen threw a drinking party at his apartment, where he demanded the presence of a beautiful woman and the famous Polish pianist and composer Kagan, who was imprisoned in the camp. That morning, Kagan and the woman were killed so that they could not reveal what had happened in van Eupen's apartment.

These were not isolated cases of extermination of Jews, but a systematic system of extermination of the Jewish population.

Question: What do you know about the extermination of people in the "death camp," or Camp No. 2?

Answer: I myself, as I have already said, was only in the "death camp" for a few hours, but, according to the accounts of Jews who worked there for a year—Golberg, Grinberg, and others, as well as the guards—the "death camp" was specifically built for the mass extermination of the Jewish population. Jews arriving at the death camp were mostly unloaded from train cars, then forced to strip naked and then driven to the "bathhouse," which held several thousand people. This "bathhouse" had several chambers into which people were driven. All the doors were hermetically sealed, and a motor was started, from which a pipe ran into the chambers, and through this pipe exhaust gases from the motor entered the chambers, which was used to suffocate the people. About 15 minutes later, the outer doors were opened, and the corpses of people were pulled out of the chambers and carried into large pits, which held several tens of thousands of people, after which the pits were filled in, and this continued until approximately September 1942. Then, special ovens were built at the death camp, and corpses were dug up and burned in these ovens. From that time on, the bodies of those being exterminated were no longer buried, but burned directly in these ovens. The burning of corpses continued until approximately August–September 1943. The ovens operated continuously, day and night. Columns of black smoke rose above the camp for almost a year. At night, the glow from the ovens could be seen tens of kilometers away. An unbearable smell of burnt flesh and the stench of decomposing corpses, which emanated from the graves as they were being excavated, pervaded the entire area.

I personally witnessed three or four trains of 60-70 cars each, carrying Jews from various countries, arriving at the death camp every day. All of these trains passed through the "death camp" and returned empty. I witnessed this throughout my stay in Camp No. 1.

As I know from conversations with SS men, both camps were built according to the designs of the architect Schulte. I met him myself, and he visited the camp and supervised the construction of Camp No. 2. After the camp was built, Schulte left for Warsaw, and then returned several times to observe the progress of the "bathhouse." I cannot speak in detail about its operation, as I know very little about it, and that is only from conversations.

Question: Who can you name as the perpetrators of the atrocities committed in the camp, known to you from [illegible] in the camp?

Answer: Of these individuals, I know the following:

1. Hauptsturmführer [illegible] van Eupen, a German from Düsseldorf, a former lawyer, [illegible], blond, round-faced, wore down the insides of his heels when he walked. Large, bulging eyes. He personally engaged in beatings, shootings, and raping women. He shot and beat people for fun. On his orders, the famous Polish musician Kagan was executed. He was the camp commander.
2. Untersturmführer Fran[z] Preifi, a German from Frankfurt am Main, worked as a postman before the war, 50 years old, tall, thin, bald, no upper teeth. He had a false upper jaw with teeth, but didn't wear them. His cruelty was comparable to von Eupen's. He personally murdered many hundreds of Jews.
3. Unterschaftführer Hagen, a German from the city of Hagen, medium height, dark hair, dark bulging eyes, 32 years old, has only one toe on his right foot, the others were torn off on the Soviet-German front, as he himself told. He personally beat and shot prisoners.
4. Unterschaftführer Linden, adjutant to Van Eupen, 30 years old, medium height, blond hair, was exclusively involved in executions, often saying: we talk well, we shoot even better. Executioner of the city of Kosów.
5. Unterschaftführer Schwarz, from the city of Lübeck, tall, thin, strong build – drove people to work in Małkinia, where he shot dozens of Jews daily.
6. Unterschaftführer Heibusch, from Frankfurt am Main, a philosophy student, about 30 years old, tall, dark-haired, with a round face, supervised the assignment of people to work. He personally carried out beatings.
7. Unterschaftführer Stumpe, a German from [illegible], tall, thin, about 30 years old, brown-haired, worked as an electrical engineer before the war, was the head of the guards, beat and shot Jews personally. He beat the guards if they treated the prisoners with indifference.
8. Unterschaftführer Lanz, a German, 32 years old, of average height, thin, blond, was the head of all the workshops. He personally beat and shot prisoners. He moved his family to the city of Ostrow. Before the war, he was a carpenter.
9. Rottenführer Weissar, a German from Poznan, tall, fat, blond, head of the camp's agricultural plots. He also personally beat Jews.
10. Rottenführer Leibke, the camp driver, short, blond, about 25-26 years old. He beat Jews.
11. Rottenführer Felden, a German of medium height, brown-haired, round-faced, about 28 years old, garage supervisor. He was involved in beating prisoners.
12. Zugwachtmaster Dingelmann, a German, tall, very thin, about 30 years old, a shoemaker before the war. He was distinguished by exceptional brutality when beating Jews with whips. He often beat them to death.
13. Gruppenwachtmaster Vatis, a German from Russia, medium height, slow in action, about 28 years old, brown-haired, was the head of the Ukrainian guards, distinguished by his cruelty, personally killed and shot Jews.
14. Zugwachtmaster Stieben, a German from Russia, short, blond, about 30 years old, had smallpox, which gave him a gnarled face, and surpassed all the guards in his cruelty. Beating up Jews was his favorite pastime. He commanded a group of guards.
15. Zugvakhmann Munder, a German from Russia, medium height, blond, about 28 years old, limps on his right leg, was the head of a group of guards. He personally shot and beat Jews.
16. Zugvakhmann Swidersky, a German from Russia, medium height, thin, black, missing his right eye. He personally shot hundreds of Jews.
17. Zugvakhmann Braun, a German from Russia, about 26 years old, medium height, dark-haired, round-faced.
18. Zugvakhmann Usik, a Ukrainian, reportedly from Kyiv, medium height, plump, about 30 years old, killed in Warsaw during the ghetto revolt.
19. Oberwakhmann Emil Huthartz, a German from Moscow, medium height, about 21 years old, van Eupen's orderly, thin-legged, skinny. He demonstrated exceptional cruelty in his abuse of Jews. He personally executed them and imitated Van Eupen in all his actions.
20. Oberwachman Olshanikov, a Ukrainian from Zhitomir, tall, dark-haired, and thin. He personally killed many people, always with a hammer.
21. Oberwachman Pisarenko, a Ukrainian from Kyiv, about 25 years old, tall, blond, and plump. He personally participated in the executions and beatings of Jews. According to reports, he was killed.
22. Oberwachman Baltitsa, a Latvian about 28 years old, of medium height, blond, participated in the beatings and executions of Jews.
23. Oberwachman Ciba, a Pole from Lublin, about 25 years old, of medium height, blond, worked as a driver. He personally beat Jews.

Question: Under what circumstances did you escape from the camp?

Answer: As I already said, for the last three months I had been working in a bakery outside the camp, which meant it was under lax security. Taking advantage of this, I decided to escape. On the night of September 4, 1943, when the guard guarding the bakery had gone off somewhere, all of us, the bakery workers, were sleeping near the bakery. Taking advantage of the guard's absence, Gershteyn, the Jew, Shmulber, and I, along with another Jew, left the barracks and fled into the forest, where we hid. Before the Red Army arrived, I hid with a Pole named Góral, who lived 2 km from Kosów. We had worked out our escape plan long before it was put into effect.

I can't show anything else. The report was written down correctly based on my words and was read to me [signature/].

Interrogated by military investigator, Guard Senior Lieutenant of Justice [signature/]

Interrogation protocol of Szymon Cegiel about the Treblinka labor camp and the situation of Jewish prisoners. Village of Kosów Lacki, September 22, 1944.

Kosów, September 22, 1944.

Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, military investigator of the 65th Army's Military Prosecutor's Office, interrogated the following as a witness, who testified:

Cegiel Szymon Mendelevich, born 1919, native of Kosów, Sokołów County, resident of Kosów, Jewish, worker.

Having been warned of liability for retracting testimony and for giving false testimony, he testified as follows:

On June 3, 1942, Germans from Treblinka Camp No. 1, the so-called "work camp," arrived in Kosów. They needed specialists, and I was among 10 Jewish skilled workers they took to Treblinka. I remember well the people who took us to the camp. These were Hauptsturmführer von Eupen, the camp commandant, Untersturmführer Prefi, Unterscharführer Leon Lanz, Rottenführer Meiwis, Navigator Felden, and the guards—Gruppenwacht Munke, Oberwacht Ushanikov, a guard named Mikola, Gruppenwacht Braun, Oberwacht Emel, Gruppenwacht Ratz, and several others. When I arrived, three barracks occupied by camp personnel and two separate barracks surrounded by a fence stood completely isolated. Jewish laborers and Jewish and Polish specialists lived in them.

That evening, Unterscharführer Lanz gathered all of us who had arrived and addressed us with the following words:

"If you work well, everything will be as it should be, and you will live. If you don't work as we demand, you will go to the forest" (which meant execution).

There were 40 Jewish artisans in the camp, and 270 unskilled laborers, including German and Polish Jews.

The daily routine was as follows: reveille at 4:30 AM. Work began at 5:30 AM and lasted until 12:00 PM. After a lunch break at 1:00 PM, we returned to work and usually finished at 5:00 PM. However, this was only if there were no urgent orders.

I did various carpentry jobs. We were given 300 grams of bread per day. Actually, this was a nominal amount, because we never actually got 300 grams. In the morning, we were usually given soup, which was essentially just water with unpeeled potatoes. For lunch, it was the same soup, the only difference being a couple of potatoes. For dinner, coffee with 18 grams of sugar. That was the daily menu. The Germans were especially provocatively picky about the work of Jewish specialists. If a German didn't like a chair, you could bet he'd hit you over the head with it. I had such an experience. I made a custom-made so-called "spoon" for removing boots. The workshop chief, Unterscharführer Lanz, looked at the product and, without saying a word, hit me in the face with it. The unskilled laborers suffered the most abuse and beatings. If you displease a German in any way, you are guaranteed a flogging.

I saw a German Jew named Paul beaten with sticks so hard for going to the toilet without asking permission, by Unterscharführer Einbuch and two guards, Braun and Ratz, all three of them, that he broke his spine. The dying Paul was dragged into the forest and shot there.

In July 1942, 350 Jews were brought to the camp from Warsaw. Among them were about 100 boys aged 12-13. These boys and 30 adult men were left in the camp. The remaining 200 were shot. Unterscharführer Einbuch oversaw this execution. The SS carried it out.

In the last days of July, I remember well, on a Saturday, Untersturmführer Prefi forced 100 boys to sing songs all day. By evening, he had selected 50 of the strongest of them, and shot the rest that same day in the forest. Of the 50 remaining in the camp, the next day they were sent to work at the Małkinia station. Two of this group escaped.

Upon returning to the camp, Unterscharführer Stumpe and Gruppenwachsmann Munke organized the execution of 18 boys as punishment. I was not in the forest where they were shot. Before my eyes, they were all rounded up and led into the forest. Along the way, guards prodded them with sticks and rifle butts. A few minutes later, a volley of gunfire was heard. The guards returned without the boys. It should be noted that the Germans and guards never took anyone far away to be shot. Not only did they not intend to hide their atrocities, but, on the contrary, they did everything to ensure that their brutal reprisals or the threatening <warning?> would be familiar to each of us. One late evening, already dark, a truck was heading toward the camp; the road was not yet good. The truck got stuck in the sand. Twenty Jews were sent to help. Two of them, brothers, took advantage of the opportunity to escape. For this, Prefi ordered the guards to shoot 28 Jews. Addressing us, Prefi said, "Today is a good day—the shooting of 28 Jews." He said this in his usual joking tone when discussing the deaths of dozens of people. It was a Sunday. Two weeks later, in the city of Siedlce, the gendarmerie detained two brothers who had escaped and escorted them back to the camp. They were forced to stand at attention all day. This despite the fact that one of them had been wounded in the arm. That evening, during roll call, in the presence of all the Jewish workers, they were tied up. Moreover, they were tied up in an unusual way: with their heads pressed against their feet. They lay on the ground like this all night. In the morning, Rottenführer Meiwis and Unterscharführer Schwarz trampled them underfoot and beat them with sticks in front of everyone.

And then, together with a group of 7 sick people, they were taken to the forest and shot there.

In August 1942, a new batch of Jews arrived in Treblinka. Three hundred of the healthiest men were sent to our camp, the rest to the death camp. All 300 were assigned to build a highway and access roads to the garage. They had to carry large boulders 200 meters. Some were unable to cope and collapsed on the road under the unbearable weight. The Germans Einbuch, Schwarz, and Meiwis, as well as guards Ushanikov, Braun, and Stiebe—a Gruppenwachmann, and later a Zugwachmann, Oberwachmann Nikolai, and Oberwachmann Emel—used the most savage, yet characteristic, methods of reprisal against the weak: they would collectively pick up a stone dropped by a weak person and drop it on the person themselves, or simply hit them on the head with the stone. Thus, 6 people were killed, about 100 crippled people were sent to camp No. 2, in exchange for which they received healthy ones.

I forgot to mention one very important detail. When the 300 Jews I mentioned above arrived at the camp, Unterscharführer Linder and Unterscharführer Hagen ordered everyone to immediately hand over all gold jewelry, money, and valuables, or face execution. Identity documents of those arriving at the camp were immediately destroyed in public. In September of that same year, four Jews from the towns of Falenica and Rembertow hid in the attic of a barracks occupied by free laborers, intending to escape the camp that night. One of the free laborers, a Pole, reported this to camp authorities. Einbuch, Ushanikov, and Rottenführer Weisser dragged the Jews from the attic and stabbed all four to death with bayonets right there near the barracks. One of the Jews fought with the oberwachman Ushanikov and inflicted [illegible] a knife wound to his face.

Every day, two or three corpses were brought from Małkinia station, where they went to work.

Doctors Mikhovsky and then Olzer periodically examined the prisoners. Those they deemed ill were taken into the forest and shot by the Germans that same day. The only medicine in the camp was a bullet. This was in mid-January 1943. The camp commandant, Hauptsturmführer van Eupen, announced that he was going to the Warsaw Ghetto to seek specialists.

That same day, 37 sick Jews were singled out, their hands frostbitten and temporarily paralyzed. They were ordered to clean out the latrine and carry all the filth out into the forest on stretchers. The first pair went into the forest and never returned. The second pair went into the forest and also never returned. The rest realized what was happening and refused to go into the forest. Then guards came out of the forest—one of them named Mikola—and beat the rest to death with sticks. This Mikola must be credited with possessing an extraordinary skill in taking a person's life with a single blow to the head. He infallibly delivered a single blow. That was enough. He had become so skilled at quickly and easily taking people's lives without wasting lead. All these human degenerates seemed to compete with each other in cruelty. In January, a carload of rutabagas arrived at the camp. One of the camp labor prisoners took one and began eating it. Prefi approached him and asked him to open his mouth and show what he was eating. The Jewish worker complied. And as soon as he opened his mouth, Prefi fired his pistol straight into his mouth. He fell down dead.

One evening in February, I was returning to my barracks from the commandant's office, where I had been repairing a cabinet. Quite by chance, I witnessed the following episode: late in the evening, workers were returning one by one from the Małkinia station to the camp. Outside the gates, on either side, stood Unterscharführer Schwarz, Rottenführer Weisser, Gruppenwachmann Braun, and Shannikov. As soon as a worker entered the camp, one of the group would push him in the opposite direction, and the one standing opposite would hit him on the head with a wooden mallet. Braun wielded the hammer more than anyone else. One blow from his hammer would take a man's life. It was a short and precise blow. Such was Braun's virtuosity in the field of murder. During this evening "study," up to 30 people were killed. In the morning, they all lay frozen at the entrance. In March, a guard led three Jews into the forest to chop wood. The Jews killed the guard and fled. The next day, the guard's funeral took place. At the guard's grave (which remains to this day), in an act of revenge, the guards killed 101 Jews from the labor camp with sticks. Among them, I know Manfried from Germany and Toltosch, also from Germany.

In April, while sitting in the workshop, I heard a terrible scream. Looking out the window, I saw guards (I don't know their names), three of them, chopping off the heads of Jewish workers with axes. They hacked seven people to death. A little later, I learned the reason for this savage massacre. A group of Jews was sent to work in the forest. Several escaped. Then the rest were brought to the camp. Seven were killed with an axe. The rest were beaten with sticks. The guards always carried out all such reprisals with the knowledge and on the instructions of Unterscharführer Einbuch. Unterscharführer Schwarz could always be seen with a stick in his hand. He liked to ask people whenever he met them: "Do you want to live?" (Willst du leben?). Upon receiving a "yes" answer, he would hit them with his stick, as if in reward.

I remember one April, a group of us Jewish workers were clearing snow. One of our group, apparently tired, went to the restroom. Schwartz pulled him out and asked his signature question: "Willst du leben?" ("Do you want to live?"). He replied, "I do." Schwartz swung his stick and hit him hard across the torso. He fell. Schwartz asked the same question again, as the man groaned in terrible pain. He barely managed to utter, "I do." Schwartz hit him again with his stick. This time, on the head. He died.

That same April, Prefi and Shannikov hacked to pieces with an axe a Jew from Grodno who had escaped from the Małkinia station while working.

In early May 1943, 10 disassembled barracks were brought to the camp by train. The distance from the railway line to the camp was 200 meters. Along the entire journey from the train to the camp grounds, SS men and guards stood on both sides, relentlessly beating anyone who showed any signs of fatigue with sticks. Seven workers were killed. In the first ten days of May, up to 1,000 people were brought from Warsaw. Some were used to build the barracks, others were sent to work at Małkinia station. Every day, 10-15 corpses were brought from there to the camp.

Camp Commandant van Eupen, drunk, mounted his horse and galloped into a group of workers walking from the Małkinia station.

Drunken SS men rushed out of the building with shovels and struck the workers prostrate on the ground with all their might. The massacre continued for a long time. Fifty workers were killed. The SS men then fired their rifles indiscriminately, so a significant number of the 50 were killed by gunfire.

The SS had no trouble executing innocent people. One July day, Prefi, for no apparent reason, fired a burst of machine gun fire from his window. Several people were killed.

In July, a group of men and women arrived at the camp. Commandant Eupen selected several beautiful women. They stayed with him all night, their screams audible. By morning, they were shot.

In November, due to a lack of work at Małkinia station, a group of 300 Jews was transferred to the camp to work on road construction. Three or four people were leaving daily. The trend toward their complete extermination was quite obvious. And in December, I remember, 50 people were shot on Saturday and the remaining 100 on Sunday. Many were shot while sorting military clothing that had arrived at the camp for storage.

It was freezing, and the workers were very lightly dressed, so everyone naturally took some of this clothing for themselves. If the Germans noticed anyone wearing military clothing, they shot them without a word. In June 1944, Eupen himself supervised the hanging of two Jews who had escaped from the camp.

A short time earlier, a Jew from Warsaw had been executed. Unterscharführer Lanz had found a notebook in his possession, recording all the atrocities committed by the Germans. In July, rumors of the approaching Red Army began to filter into the camp.

On July 23, 1944, a significant number of SS troops arrived at the camp. All Jews in the camp were ordered out of their barracks and onto the square. Only a small group of tailors, shoemakers, and carpenters was left behind to finish their work. Those gathered in the square were asked to lie down on the ground. Then, in groups of twenty, they were led into the forest to be shot. Some of the first two groups managed to escape. Then the SS ordered the next group to go into the forest with their hands raised and their trousers pulled down, which impeded their freedom of movement. 570 people were shot that day.

I have nothing more to add. This is written down accurately from my words and was read to me [signature/].

Military investigator of the 65th Army's military prosecutor's office [signature/]

Interrogation protocol of Mendel Koritnicki, former member of the Treblinka labor team. Village of Wólka Dolna, September 23, 1944.

V[illage] of Wólka Dolna, Kosów Commune, Sokołów County, Lublin Voivodeship, September 23, 1944.

Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office, Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, interrogated the below-named witness, who testified:

Koritnicki Mendel Izrailovich, born in 1904, native of Warsaw, resident of the village of Albinów, Kosów Commune, Sokołów County, Jewish, 6th grade education, tailor by profession.

Warned of liability for refusing to testify and for giving false testimony /signature/.

He testified in essence:

From 1940 until September 1942, I was in the Warsaw Ghetto. On the evening of September 2, I was returning home from the garment factory where I had recently worked. I was unable to enter my home because a roundup was taking place at that time, and all the Jews were being lined up outside to be transported to the train station. I told the SS man standing outside my house that I had a legitimization—a deferment—due to my work at the military garment factory. He replied that I should line up, and then, after checking my documents, I would be released.

But this didn't happen. Each of us was allowed to take a total of no more than 15 kilograms of belongings and sent to the station square, where up to 6,000 Jews had gathered, including men, women, the elderly, and children. Until the last minute, I was convinced there had been a mistake, that the management, as soon as they learned of what had happened, would return me to work. But later it became clear that this mass exodus of Jews from Warsaw was a state-sponsored event, coordinated locally with the factory and plant management.

A train of 60 cars approached the station. 100 people were loaded into each car. The cramped conditions were exceptional, especially considering that the Polish cars were significantly smaller than the Russian ones. There were no official announcements about the purpose or route of our journey during this entire time. Rumors circulated that we were going to work in Ukraine. On the evening of September 3, the train departed Warsaw station and arrived at Treblinka station on the morning of September 4. All the carriages were locked for the entire journey.

Air came in through a single, tiny window. Food was not provided, and we couldn't even get water at the stations. The guards severely punished us for even the slightest attempt to communicate with anyone outside the car. All night long, we could hear the guards' gunshots and the screams of those inside the cars. For even a single request for water in the car, the guards, without a word, fired into the car.

So it wasn't surprising that when the train cars were opened at Treblinka, some of them were found to be half dead. The train stopped not at the Treblinka camp itself, but at the Treblinka station, 2 kilometers short of the camp. We asked the people standing at the station where we were being taken. They all gave different answers. But I vividly remember how some boys told us, "You'll go two kilometers, and then you'll only have half an hour to live." Twenty cars were detached from the entire train. I was in those first 20 cars. On the way to the camp, I noticed a group of Jews working on the railroad. These, as I later learned, were prisoners from Treblinka Camp No. 1. Our train entered the camp grounds. It's important to note this detail: this time, as on all other occasions, all the cars entered the camp grounds itself, while the locomotive was attached to the rear of the train at Treblinka station and never entered the camp grounds. This was apparently done so that the locomotive crew would be completely unaware of camp affairs.

The train doors opened, and we all stepped out onto the platform. The platform was commanded by German guards and a Jew wearing an armband with the inscription "Lagerältster" [camp elder], which literally meant "senior" or "oldest in the camp." The women were lined up separately, led to a nearby barrack, and, before reaching it, were asked to remove their boots and stockings and leave them near the barracks, while they themselves, with all their personal belongings, entered the barracks.

The men stood in the square the entire time, no more than 10 meters from the women's locker room. I distinctly heard a German address the women in the locker room with the following words: "Undress. Leave your things here and get ready for the bathhouse. Take your money and gold with you; deposit them at the cashier's office on your way to the bathhouse and pick them up on your way back." All the things remained in the locker room. The women were led to the so-called bathhouse. The men were ordered to line up. The chief of reception at the camp, Unterscharführer Max Biala, as I later learned, selected the healthiest men and announced to them, including myself, that they would be used for various tasks[?]. Our first task was to carry the things the women had left behind to the sorting department. The rest were ordered to undress and get ready for the bathhouse. Thus, considering that up to 190 of the healthiest men were retained for various jobs, 1,800–1,850 men, women, and children from our first batch were sent to the bathhouse. Moreover, all of them were processed through the "bathhouse" within half an hour, because within the next half hour, another 20 wagons arrived, and everything was repeated with the same sequence.

After these 20 cars, the last 20 cars of our train arrived. The entire procedure I described with them occurred in the same order and sequence. That evening, Unterscharführer Max Bella lined up all the men left for work again and began selecting the most fit, strong men, and those without any signs of beatings. The rest were taken to the so-called hospital. The hospital was a substantial pit, surrounded by pine saplings, where the executions of Jews guilty of misbehavior or unfit for work took place. The next day, I received another assignment—cleaning the platform and incoming cars. I served there, on the camp's work crew, until July 26, 1943.

During this time, the team performed various tasks. The first week, I was busy cleaning the platform and incoming train cars, and the second week, I was assigned to carry corpses from the cells to the pits. It should be noted that my job consisted of adjusting the position of the corpses lying on stretchers. I had to reposition them so they lay face up, as nearby dentists were extracting all their gold teeth. Then, for two days, I worked on the construction of the second "bathhouse" building, then a week camouflaging the camp with pine branches. For seven months, I was busy chopping wood, and the last two months, I worked as a tinsmith.

The work crew had the following routine. We rose at 5:00 a.m. and worked from 6:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m. Then there was an hour-long break, and work usually continued until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. Sometimes trains arrived late in the evening or at night. In these cases, we worked day and night. At the slightest provocation, and more often than not for no reason at all, the Germans and the guards supervising our work would cruelly abuse us, beating us with whips, sticks, or hard objects. In June 1943, such an incident happened to me. While melting resin, I was lost in thought. At that moment, the commandant's closest assistant, Untersturmführer Franz Kurt, approached me and asked me why I was lying down during work hours. I replied that I had not been lying down, but only "sitting down?" This was followed by a terrible blow to the head from the rake that Kurt was holding in his hand. The blow was so forceful that the rake broke. That wasn't enough. That evening, as a disciplinary measure, the same Franz Kurt ordered me to lie down on a bench, tied me up, and administered 50 lashes to my body. Fifty lashes was his standard number, a number he never deviated from. If anyone showed signs of fatigue during work, they were immediately taken to the pits and shot, ostensibly under the pretext of being transferred to corpse-carrying duties.

I remember once an Unterscharführer named [illegible] shot a young man from Częstochowa in the square in front of everyone because he was absent-minded while packing his belongings: he put an armband with a Zionist star among other things.

The arrival of train cars carrying people was uneven. There were days when up to 180 train cars arrived, more often 60-80. Other days, no trains arrived at all. Jews were also brought from nearby ghettos by car or on foot. During my time at the camp, Jews arrived from various European and American countries: Poland, Belarus, Austria, Germany itself, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. Among the American Jews were those who were still in Europe when the Nazis occupied Europe. The Germans promised them repatriation, allowed them to take all their belongings with them, and transported them to Treblinka.

A significant percentage of those arriving were intellectuals. Many were doctors and engineers. It's hard for me to remember their names now, because they didn't stay in the camp: they were immediately sent to the "bathhouse." I knew one of Warsaw's most famous doctors, Milikowski, well. He ended up in Treblinka and shared the fate of others. I witnessed a professor from Częstochowa being sent to the "bathhouse."

Because word of the Treblinka death camp had spread far beyond its borders, and the very name Treblinka (illegible) had become quite popular and, naturally, caused anxiety among those heading there, the appearance of a completely different station was created near the platform to mislead those arriving. For this purpose, the station was named "Ober-Majdan." Banners were hung, reading "Białystok" and "Wołkowysk," thus demonstrating the transit nature of Ober-Majdan Station. Furthermore, there was a sign reading "Ticket Office," with a typical station clock mounted above it. All of this was a sham. This station had no connection whatsoever with either Białystok or Wołkowysk. The ticket office was inactive.

On the square near the platform, a large sign in German read: "Attention. Undress. Place your belongings in storage, and your money and gold in the cash register. Submit to disinfection. Afterwards, you will receive new clothes and be transported to Ukraine."

All arrivals were lined up. The women were led away first. They undressed near the building, instructing them to remove their boots and stockings, tie them up, and place them right there near the building. They were then asked to enter and undress themselves. They were required to leave all belongings and clothing in the locker room.

There, without exception, everyone had their hair cut. From the locker room, a path, lined on both sides with barbed wire woven with pine branches, led to the so-called bathhouse. Along the way, everyone was forced to hand over documents, money, and gold to the cashier. The women entered the "bathhouse" first. Meanwhile, using every measure of force, the Germans and guards forced the men to undress in the courtyard outside the barracks. Each person was required to carry their boots to the special sorting barrack "B" and all other clothing to barracks #1. Then they returned to the locker room and, bypassing the cashier where they handed over documents, money, and gold, headed to the bathhouse. The Germans and guards used every means of abuse against these defenseless people, from insults to their national sensibilities to beatings and executions on the spot. It is important to note that all personal belongings, gold and other valuable items, as well as women's hair, taken from people were sorted and packed by a special group of workers, and all of this was sent by train to Germany.

It's characteristic that everyone entering the "bathhouse" had to raise their hands, and an SS officer standing at the entrance checked to see if anyone had hidden gold.

I worked for a week in October 1942 in the second section of the Treblinka camp, which was quite rightfully called a death camp. By this time, the first "bathhouse" building, consisting of three cells, was already completed and operational; the second, ten-cell building, was under construction.

I spent the first five days working at the first building, transporting corpses, and two days constructing the second "bathhouse."

The current "bathhouse" was a small, wide building with a sealed roof. A Zionist star—the sign of David—was installed on the roof at the entrance. Climbing the stairs, we entered a corridor. At the opposite end of the corridor, a motor was installed, and next to it was the room where Ivan and Mikola, the motor's operators, lived.

Three doors also opened onto the corridor, leading to cells. The cells measured 4x5x2 meters. The floor was tiled, the walls plastered. Opposite the entrance door was the exit door, which opened not in the usual way—to the side—but from the bottom up, as the lintels were at the top of the door frame. Each cell had a pipe running from the motor. A small window was cut into the ceiling, through which Unterscharführer Schmidt, who was in charge of the "bathhouse," observed the goings-on in the cells. A cement platform was installed at the rear of this building, onto which the corpses were dumped. The cells were packed to capacity. At the entrance to the cells, as a rule, with whips stood Unterscharführer Schmidt, the head of this gas chamber, Unterscharführer Lefner, Unterscharführer Butskov, who later committed suicide, Scharführer Matis, Oberscharführer Karol, Unterscharführer Florian and guards Ivan and Mikola.

As people approached the cells, they lost all illusions; it became clear to them that death lay ahead. Terrible screams, groans, and cries were constantly heard. The Germans and guards forced them into the cells, beating them.

Ivan was particularly brutal. He cut out ears, noses, and women's breasts. I witnessed this horrific scene several times. Moreover, while committing these monstrous atrocities, Ivan would let out a sinister laugh. While carrying corpses, I witnessed thousands of people being strangled. There were cases where each person carrying ten stretchers from a single cell had to return four times to retrieve a corpse. Thus, 400 people were admitted into a single cell at a time. There were three such cells.

Many of the corpses were missing ears, and women were missing breasts. Many had blood coming from their nasopharynxes. The chambers operated only during the day. It's interesting to note the following fact for understanding the nature of death in the chambers: the motor was located inside the building itself; there was no exhaust venting. During my work, there was no mass cremation of corpses, as was the case later. As I've already shown, dentists extracted all the gold teeth from the corpses and dumped them in pits, lightly covering them with earth. The cremation of corpses became widespread in November 1942. I saw special excavators digging up previously dumped corpses. I also saw the so-called furnaces used for cremation. The design of such a furnace is simple: rails are laid on supports at small intervals. Moreover, these furnaces were built not in pits, but on the surface, to ensure a plentiful supply of air.

Question: Besides what you've already said, what other instances of German atrocities in this camp are known to you?

Answer: There were two work teams in the camp: one wore blue armbands and was called the "heavenly team." Its job was to clean the platform and incoming train cars. A similar team of 40 people was called the "red team," as each of them wore a red armband. The leaders of both teams were the so-called Kapos, and their assistants were the Vorarbeiter. One day, in October 1942, a Jewish member of the heavenly team asked a guard how many guards there were in the camp. Untersturmführer Franz Kurt declared the Jew a spy and, in full view of everyone, hanged him upside down on the gallows.

Kurt's faithful and constant companion was an enormous dog named "Bari." This dog had apparently undergone extensive training. If Kurt pointed at a worker and said, "He doesn't want to work," the dog would run up to them and always try to grab their genitals. This always ended with the wounded man being carried to the outpatient clinic and then exterminated. The sick were not treated. The sick and weak were sent to the infirmary, meaning to be shot.

In October of that same year, 1942, a Jewish prisoner killed Unterscharführer Max Biala for mocking his wife. That same day, on orders from the commandant, whose name I don't remember, Franz Kurt shot this Jew and four others in front of everyone. That evening, 10 more prisoners were shot for the same thing, and the next morning, 60 people. One day in April 1943, Oberscharführer Kuttner came into sorting barrack "A." He noticed one of the Jewish workers sitting listlessly, not working. He asked him why he was inactive. The man replied that he was ill and asked to be sent to the infirmary. Kuttner replied that he couldn't do that. The next day, he summoned the sick man and said: "Yesterday you wanted to go to the infirmary, but the German didn't want to. Today you don’t want to - I want to” and sent him to our notorious hospital to be shot.

In February 1943, I remember, two new Jews were shot because, lacking firewood for cooking, they chopped up two wooden stretchers.

As for being whipped, each of us suffered this on a daily basis.

Question: List all the personnel of Treblinka Camp No. 2 who were directly responsible for the barbaric plan to exterminate the Jewish population.

Answer:

1. Obersturmführer Himala—the camp commandant, who devoted much effort to perfecting the entire extermination machine. He loved order in everything and severely punished anyone who displeased him.
2. Untersturmführer Franz Kurt – the commandant's closest aide. He was known for his cruelty. For his excellent "service," he was promoted from Oberscharführer to Untersturmführer, skipping one rank.
3. Unterscharführer Milya – was in charge of receiving incoming trains. Before the German-Polish War, he voluntarily came to Germany from America and joined the SS.
4. Scharführer Post – supervised the Ukrainian guards and conducted training among them.
5. Oberscharführer Kuttner – camp chief. He supervised the work teams. His ferocity and bullying rivaled Franz Kurt's. He beat people without provocation and sent many Jewish workers to be shot.
6. Staff Sergeant Stadie – headed the camp office and occasionally acted as the commandant. Before the German-Polish War, he lived in the town of Łódź (Poland). Short, plump, with a feral expression, he meddled in everything. He was primarily responsible for the execution of two cooks for breaking two stretchers.
7. Unterscharführer Schmidt – Chief of the "bathhouse," he directly supervised the killing of hundreds and thousands of people in the "bathhouse" gas vans.
8. Oberscharführer Karol – Chief of the Corpse Incineration Department. Under his direction and with his direct participation, the mass incineration of corpses took place to cover up the criminal extermination of the Jewish population in the Treblinka camp.
9. Scharführer Matisse – Karol's deputy.
10. Unterscharführer Butzkov – was in charge of transporting corpses from the chamber to the pits. He demonstrated exceptional loyalty to his service.
11. Unterscharführer Leerner – worked in the 2nd section, near the corpses. He brutally beat workers who were unable to keep up with the corpse transfer.
12. Unterscharführer Florian – a body-carrying overseer. He zealously carried out his duties, beating workers with a whip. Before the Nazi-Polish War, he lived in the Silesian Voivodeship (Poland).
13. Unterscharführer Mita – the last chief of the "hospital," where the executions of camp workers took place. He was nicknamed the devil. He took the lives of innocent people.
14. Unterscharführer Mentz – the first chief of the "hospital," where sick and weakened Jewish workers were executed; before the Nazi-Polish War, he lived in Bydgoszcz (Poland).
15. Unterscharführer Paul Bredow – chief of sorting in Barrack "A." He actively participated in robbing people arriving at the camp. Under his leadership, clothes were sorted, packed and sent to Germany.
16. Unterscharführer Sydow – Chief of Camp Camouflage.
17. Unterscharführer Schiffner – Chief of Carpenters and Metalworkers. A German from the Sudetenland.
18. Unterscharführer Zeiffner – Performed various police and economic functions.
19. Unterscharführer Rum – Chief of Sorting Barrack No. 1. Took direct part in robbing arriving prisoners.
20. Unterscharführer Genz – Chief of the camp's transport group. Was responsible for receiving incoming elements.
21. Unterscharführer Bilitz – Had the same duties.
22. Unterscharführer Sukhomil – Chief of Money Sorting. He was in charge of the cash register where Jews were robbed of all their documents, gold, and money. A Sudeten German provocateur who ingratiated himself with the prisoners and then told Kurt about all his conversations with them. This was followed by executions.
23. Oberscharführer Ludwig – worked in the "bathhouse" gas chamber, while also working as a driver.
24. Unterscharführer Metzink – head of the camp's food service.
25. Unterscharführer Petzinger – was responsible for carrying and burning corpses.
26. Unterscharführer Sepp – head of the women's locker room, where Jewish women's belongings were confiscated and from where they were forcibly sent to the "bathhouse." He was violent, beating women and children.
27. Zugvakhman Strube – senior guard, a German from the Volga. Under his leadership, the guards carried out brutal reprisals against prisoners and directly carried out all of Franz Kurt's plans to execute people.
28. Zugvakhman Alexander Jaeger, a German from Russia. He was the senior guard platoon leader.
29. Zugvakhman Biederman, a German from the Volga region, was in charge of the Ukrainian guards.
30. Zugvakhman Schultz – staff clerk.
31. Zugvakhman Regosa – a Ukrainian from Poland, guard platoon commander.
32. Zugvakhman Manzhuk – a Pole from Piotrków, worked at the guardhouse.
33. Zugvakhman Loch – platoon commander, a Pole from Warsaw.
34. Zugvakhman Ribertus – platoon commander, a German from Poland.
35. Vakhman Vasily Voronkov – killed many defenseless people, Russian.

I have nothing more to add. This is written down accurately from my words and was read to me [signature/].

Recorded by investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office, Senior Lieutenant of Justice [signature/ Yurovsky]

Question: Besides the Jewish population, were people of other nationalities exterminated?

Answer: Besides Jews, Roma were also exterminated. During my stay in the camp, 1,000–1,100 Roma were exterminated.

Question: Do you know which senior government, Nazi, and SS officials visited the camp?

Answer: In October 1942, when I was working in the camp's 2nd Department, Himmler arrived by plane. Accompanied by others, he inspected the pits full of corpses, and the entire tour lasted only a few minutes. Without saying anything, he quickly left.

It was obvious from everything that this was some high-ranking SS official. I learned it was Himmler from a German and a guard. I remember the German swearing, saying, "Damn it, Himmler's here, and they're not working."

SS generals came from Berlin and Lublin several times. I don't know their names. I can't add anything else. This is written down correctly and was read to me /signature/.

[Military] Investigator, Senior Lieutenant of the Justice [Signature/] [Yurovsky]

Additional protocol of interrogation of Mendel Koritnitsky. Sterdyń, September 26, 1944

The city of Sterdyń, Sokołów County, September 26, 1944. The military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army, senior lieutenant of justice Yurovsky, interrogated the below-named as a witness, who testified:

Koritnitsky Mendel (further known)

I have been warned about the responsibility for refusing to testify and for giving false testimony /signature/.

In addition to the testimony I have given, I report:

I. As I recall, the commandant of Camp No. 2, where I spent my time from July 1942 to August 1943, was not Himalya, but Obersturmführer Otto Stangel, a German from Dresden. Himalya was often at the camp, but I don't know his subsequent status.

Otto Stangel carved out a career for himself in this field. He was distinguished by his ferocity and exceptional meticulousness in matters related to the killing of people. He was often absent from the camp, during which time he was engaged in rounding up Jews in various towns and villages.

For the first seven months under me he was an Oberleutnant of the Gendarmerie, and then he was awarded the rank of SS-Obersturmführer.

To understand his contribution to Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jewish population, one must take into account that becoming an SS officer was not an easy task.

Among other persons from the camp staff I remembered:

1. Unterscharführer Adolf (I don’t know his last name) - served in the second, labor section of the camp;
2. Unterscharführer Gustav (I don’t know his last name) – served during the burning of corpses.

Franz Kurt took over in Stangel's absence.

II. In October 1942, a motor for the ten-cell gas chamber arrived at the camp. I helped carry it. There were about 15 of us, but that wasn't enough to lift it. We had to use rails. So you can imagine the motor was quite large. I know for sure—it was a French motor. I don't remember the brand.

I can't add anything else. It was written down correctly and read to me /signature/.

Military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army /signature/

Interrogation protocol of Jakub Domb regarding the functioning of the Treblinka death camp and the preparation of the uprising of August 2, 1943 [Kosów Lacki], September 23, 1944

On September 23, 1944, the military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness:

Domb Jakub Cukovich, born in 1905, native of the city of Nowy Dwór, near Modlin, Warsaw Voivodeship, Jewish, married, 4th grade education, place of residence in the city of Nowy Dwór.

I have been warned of liability for giving false testimony under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR /signature/.

Translation from Polish into Russian was performed by translator Lachman Tomajs Matveevich, a resident of the town of Kosów, Sokołów County, who has been warned of liability for false translation /signature/.

In essence, witness Domb testified:

In 1939, I moved with my family—my wife and four-year-old son—from Nowy Dwór to Warsaw, where I found work as a tailor. After occupying Poland, the Germans, beginning in 1940, began to round up all the Jews in Warsaw. A special section of the city was set aside for this purpose, completely isolated from the rest of the city. It was essentially a concentration camp called a ghetto. I lived in this section of Warsaw before the ghetto was built, and when it was built, I immediately found myself in it. Jews from all over Poland were brought to the ghetto, and by mid-1942, over 500,000 Jews had gathered there. Living conditions in the ghetto were appalling. No one was allowed outside the ghetto. No food was given, resulting in the Jews suffering from terrifying hunger, and several hundred people died of hunger every day. Moreover, the Germans perpetrated a veritable reign of terror here, shooting Jews almost daily for no apparent reason. The shootings became particularly frequent in mid-1942, when hundreds of people were killed daily in the streets—mutilated corpses were everywhere.

In July 1942, the Germans announced that all Jews from Warsaw would be resettled to Ukraine, where they would live well. The "ghetto" had its own Jewish police, which was ordered to gather no fewer than 6,000 Jews into the square every day from July 22, 1942, more were allowed. And starting from July 22, 1942, no fewer than 6,000 Jews were driven into the square every day—men, women, and children, and children did not count. Other Jews who were not subject to deportation were not allowed near the square on this day, so it was impossible to see what was happening in the square. First of all, they sent away Jews who were not working anywhere, and then they began to send away Jews who worked in German factories. Around mid-August 1942, when I came home one day, I did not find my wife and son at home, and the neighbors told me that they had been driven into the square and sent to Ukraine. I never saw my wife and son again, and only at the end of November 1942, when I was already working in the "death camp" sorting out garbage, I accidentally found a photograph of my son Itzik. He was photographed when he was two and a half years old, and I also found a photograph of a Jewish woman I knew with a baby, but I don't remember her last name. That's how I learned that my wife Pesia and son Itzik had been exterminated in the "death camp." I worked in Warsaw until September 20, 1942. On that day, the SS came to the factory, took all of us Jews, put us in cars and drove us to the train station, to a train where several thousand Jews had already been transported. When I arrived at the station, I saw the SS whipping the Jews and forcing them into the train cars with blows. The train had about 60 carriages, and we were herded into each carriage, 50-60 people at a time, and this was probably the only time there were only a few people in the carriage. Usually, the cars arriving at the "death camp" contained at least 170 people each. We left Warsaw when it was already dark and traveled all night, and on September 23, 1942, early in the morning, the train arrived at Treblinka station. At Treblinka station, they began to detach the cars 20 at a time from the train and divert them along a railway line into the forest. I was in the first 20 cars. From the railway, they took us through a small forest, and the train of 20 cars entered an area fenced with barbed wire. Here the train stopped, the door on the left side of the car was opened, and everyone was ordered to quickly disembark. For ease of unloading, an earthen ramp was built to the left of the cars, to which all 20 cars approached. When I got out of the train car, the first thing I saw was a pile of all kinds of shoes several meters high, about six to eight meters, near the railway track on the right side of the disembarkation area. A few meters from the disembarkation point, behind a barbed fence, stood two large buildings, about 30 meters apart. When we disembarked from the train cars, we were surrounded by guards armed with whips and sticks. To keep us from coming to our senses, they began beating us and quickly herded us into a clearing between the barracks. In the center of the clearing was a well, and behind it stood a large, wide sign that read: "Varsovians, go to the bathhouse. Get new underwear, prepare your documents, money, and valuables, and hand them over to the cashier. You will receive them back after the bathhouse." As soon as we were driven to the clearing, the women were ordered to the left and the men to the right. Then all the women were herded into the left barrack, while we men were lined up near the right barrack. They began asking us who had served in the military and had no family. Of these, 50 were selected. I was among them. While they were selecting us, the women had already undressed and were led straight from the barracks, along a path fenced with wire and camouflaged with branches, to the bathhouse. We couldn't see how they were being led, only heard loud screams and cries. There were about 1,500 to 2,000 women and children there. All the other men were also ordered to undress, and 50 of us were immediately led to the women's barracks to carry out the things the women had left behind. When we entered the barracks, the entire floor was littered with women's clothing, which we took and carried behind another barracks, where they were dumped into a huge pile and sorted. While we were wearing women's clothing, the other men who had arrived with us undressed and were also herded to the bathhouse. They were driven through the women's barracks, from which the path to the "bathhouse" led. When the men were driven away, we were forced to carry their things to be sorted as well. Later, the men themselves carried their things to be sorted, then returned and went to the "bathhouse." Everyone who went to the "bathhouse" never returned, because they were killed there, in this bathhouse, and the corpses were thrown into pits. I learned about this from conversations between workers on the very first day. I worked carrying things for about seven days, and during this time, no less than three trains of 60 cars arrived daily. The cars were loaded with 120 or more people, and while unloading, corpses were often pulled out of the cars, as people couldn't take it anymore and died en route. At the end of September 1942, I saw two trains arrive, and I don't know where they came from, but up to 50% of the Jews traveling in these trains died en route. And we were forced to carry these corpses to the pits in the "hospital." We carried more than 2,000 corpses of men, women, and children from these two trains. While working on the corpses, I saw what the "hospital" was like. It was a huge pit about 50-60 meters to the right of the barracks. This pit was densely planted with fir trees all around; next to the pit there was a small booth where there was a Jew in a white robe; on the right sleeve of the robe there was a white armband with a red cross. There were also several guards and SS men here. This "hospital" was actually a place for the mass execution of Jews, which took place in the following way: when a train arrived and people were being unloaded, they were asked who was sick or old and unable to walk. People answered, meaning nothing, and then the sick were taken away, while those unable to walk were carried to the "hospital," where they were seated on a long bench next to the pit, facing the pit, and then the SS men and guards shot them in the back of the head and threw them into the pit. I personally witnessed this several times. For example, in late September 1942, I was working on carrying corpses to the pit, and when I arrived at the "hospital," I saw more than 40 sick and elderly people brought in, seated on the edge of the pit, and then all of them shot. People were taken to the "infirmary" every day, almost without interruption. Camp commandant Kurt Franz himself often participated in the executions.

The work crew was replaced daily, as dozens of workers were shot and beaten to death each day, replaced by new arrivals. I personally witnessed the following incidents:# In March 1943, while packing a shirt, a worker forgot to remove the Jewish "Shield of David" sign from his shirt and packed the shirt. Unterschaftführer Mitte noticed this. He gathered all the workers in the square and shot the worker in front of everyone. Such incidents occurred repeatedly.

1. Several times I saw workers beaten to death because bread or other food products were found in their pockets. Once, Hauptschaftführer Küttner found a loaf of bread in a Jewish worker's pocket, for which he was beaten so badly that his entire body turned black, and then taken to the "hospital" and shot.
2. In January 1943, a guard gave a piece of bread and sausage to a gold sorter for some reason. Kurt Franz saw this and began beating the worker. He beat him on the head with a whip until it was a bloody mess. After that, Franz shot the worker. Then, Hauptwachtmann Kuttner beat a Jew to death once for stealing two potatoes.
3. At the end of September 1942, approximately on the second day of my arrival at the camp, one worker, a sorter of belongings, unable to bear the abuse, killed an SS man with a knife, for which he was hacked to pieces with shovels. In addition, about 100 Jewish workers were selected and killed as well.

I also witnessed a case where a worker, exhausted, asked to be shot; then the SS men and guards beat him for two days, saying, "Here's some easy work for you," and then killed him. Unterschaftführer Sepp, who killed infants, was especially brutal. In October 1942, I saw Sepp take a crying infant from the arms of a Jewish woman and, holding him by the legs, slam his head into the ground with such force that his brains flew everywhere; this happened near the women's locker room. I have described these incidents that stand out to me. Dozens of similar incidents occurred daily. I worked carrying things and corpses for only ten days, then chopped wood for six months, and cleaned latrines for the last four months. All this took place on the camp grounds. So I saw how the trains arrived, how they were unloaded, and how the work crew worked.

Question: Tell us what you know about the extermination of Jews in the “bathhouse”-gas chamber?

Answer: As I already said, I personally witnessed several trains carrying Jews arriving at the camp every day. The trains typically consisted of at least 60 cars. Each car held at least 100 people. Thus, up to 15,000 to 18,000 people arrived daily. All these people were herded into the locker rooms, where they stripped naked. Then they were herded to the bathhouse. Before this, the women had their hair cut, for which several Jewish hairdressers were stationed in the women's locker room. The hair was collected and taken away somewhere. A narrow corridor of barbed wire, hung with Christmas trees, led from the women's locker room to the "bathhouse," through which all the people were herded to the "bathhouse." Where this bathhouse was located, what its structure was, or how the extermination of people took place within it, I don't know, as I wasn't there. But from the accounts of Jews Goldfarb, Koritnicki, and others unknown to me who worked near the "bathhouse," I know the following: the corridor from the locker room was about 50-60 meters long and led directly to the door of the "bathhouse." Naked people were herded along this corridor. At one point near the corridor was a small building where everyone deposited documents and valuables. The corridor was lined with guards and SS men armed with whips and sticks, brutally beating people passing by, forcing them to walk faster. People walked down this corridor straight to the "bathhouse," which was a long building with a corridor down the middle. Along the sides of the corridor were cells, into which people were herded. I don't know how many cells there were. Each room had a door from the corridor that closed tightly. Similar doors led from each cell to the street. Up to 450 people were herded into each cell. Then the doors were closed and a motor was started, from which a pipe ran into the cells. What kind of motor it was or what kind of gas they used to suffocate the people, I don't know. People would remain in the cells for a short time, then open the outer doors and drag out the corpses, as everyone had died. Before carrying the corpses to the pit, their gold teeth were pulled out. All the corpses were dumped into enormous pits, where they were buried. This continued until the end of 1942, when two dredging machines were brought into the camp, which began digging up the pits and burning the corpses. From that time on, columns of black smoke rose over the camp day and night. The stench of decomposing corpses was unbearable. The burning of corpses continued until the end of the camp's existence. Suffocated bodies were no longer buried, but burned immediately. Initially, corpses were burned directly in pits, but since this was too slow, special rail grates were built on stones, onto which the corpses were laid. This method burned the corpses quickly. According to the accounts of these same Jews, many thousands of corpses were burned daily. I remained in the camp until August 1943, and during the camp uprising on August 2, 1944, I escaped with other Jews and hid in the forest for 11 months until the arrival of the Red Army. Preparations for the uprising began in April 1943. Weapons were obtained in various ways. A significant portion of the weapons were obtained through guards, who were given gold for their services. Each work team had a group, each with their own duties; the disarmed team cut passages through the barbed wire. I was on a lumberjack work team, armed with an axe and tasked with cutting a passage through the barbed wire. Both camps knew about the uprising, including the work camp, with which we maintained contact through the carpenter Vernik, who, being a skilled carpenter, built houses in the camp and had access to the death camp. The date of the uprising and the signal to the work camp were communicated as follows. Vernik was building something at the time and needed boards that were in the "death camp." He began asking for boards, and they were brought to him. Desperate to get into our camp and establish communication at all costs, Vernik rejected the boards and asked to be allowed to go to the "death camp" himself and select the boards he needed, which was granted. Arriving at our camp, Vernik spent a long time selecting boards, as there were many guards around. Seizing an opportune moment, he received a signal, and on August 2, 1943, in the afternoon, a shot began the uprising. The guards were quickly disarmed. A grenade thrown into the fuel depot ignited the gasoline, and a large fire started in the camp, which further increased the panic. Immediately upon receiving the signal, I rushed to cut down the barrier, made a passage, and escaped through it. Many more workers fled through this passage. Several passages were made in total. By the time the guards and SS men came to their senses, many people had already fled the camp. Chases and roundups immediately began, and many Jews were killed and shot. I made a passage in the barbed wire near the "hospital."

Question: Tell me, where are Goldfarb and Koritnicki now?

Answer: Goldfarb currently lives in the Sterdyń commune, and Koritnicki lives with me at the Sibinów estate in Sokołów County.

Question: Where were the clothes of the Jews murdered in the death camp sent?

Answer: The Germans said that all this clothing was being sent to them in Germany. Almost daily, trains loaded with the clothing of murdered Jews departed from the "death camp." There were up to 60 train cars. The cars were fully loaded. All valuables were removed from the camp by truck.

Question: What was the purpose of the second barracks, located near the women's locker room, where the men undressed?

Answer: This barracks had several sections. In one section, they boiled the soap brought by the Jews, cleaning it of dirt and sand. In another section, they sorted and stored all the food the Jews had brought with them. In a third section, they cleaned metal utensils and sorted sheepskin coats and fur coats. Behind the women's barracks, there was a barrack where they sorted bottles.

Question: Tell me, were you beaten in the camp?

Answer: During my time in the "death camp," I was beaten with whips and sticks many times. I can't even name them now, they were beaten so often. I remember one incident particularly well. One time, I was working shirtless. A mosquito landed on my back and bit me. I started scratching the area, which the guard noticed. For taking a break from my work for a second, I was given 40 lashes on my back, which left my back swollen and painful for a long time.

Question: What nationalities were exterminated in the "death camp"?

Answer: Only the Jewish population of Poland, France, Bulgaria, and Germany was exterminated in the "death camp." A small number of Poles and Roma were exterminated.

Question: What are the last names, first names, and other details of the individuals who carried out the extermination of people in the camp, and who beat and shot those who arrived at the camp?

Answer: I can name the following individuals who carried out the extermination of Jews, as well as those who carried out the beatings and executions:

1. Camp Commandant Kurt Franz – a German from Berlin, tall, young, bald, blond, and of strong build. He personally beat and shot Jews.
2. Unterschaftführer Sepp – a German, about 35-36 years old, with black hair and dark eyes, of medium height, thin, and distinguished by his exceptional brutality in the murder of small children.
3. Shaftführer Mitte – a German, blond, of medium height, with one shoulder higher than the other (I don't remember which), of medium build, and a long nose. For his atrocities, he was nicknamed "the devil" in the camp. He personally shot hundreds of Jews.
4. Work Brigade Chief Post – a German, black-haired, thin, of medium height, thin, a baker before the war, and a riverboat sailor. He personally shot and beat Jews.
5. Unterschaftführer Seidel – German, 40-42 years old, medium height, brown hair, large, bulging eyes, supervised road construction. He personally shot and beat Jews.
6. Unterschaftführer Miller – German, 48-50 years old, tall, plump, red-faced, blond. He reportedly shot and beat dozens of Jews to death.

I know the rest by name, but I don't remember their last names right now. I can't say anything else.

This has been written down and translated correctly from my words and read to me by /signature/.

Translated from Polish to Russian by /signature/

Interrogated by: Military Investigator, Guard Senior Lieutenant of Justice /signature/

Interrogation Protocol of Kazimierz Skarżyński Concerning the Construction and Operation of the Treblinka Labor Camp and the Murder of Jews in the Extermination Camp. Village of Wólka Dolna, September 24, 1944.

Village of Wólka Dolna, Kosów Commune, Sokołów County, September 24, 1944. Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, interrogated the following as a witness, who testified:

Skarżyński, Kazimierz, born in 1882, native of the village of Sofiivka, Kosów Commune, Sokołów County, Pole, semi-literate, farmer, resident of the village of Wólka Okrąglik, Kosów Commune.

I have been warned of liability for refusing to testify and for giving false testimony /signature/.

On the merits of the case, I testified:

As early as 1940, civilians—Germans from Germany—arrived in the area where Treblinka Labor Camp No. 1 would later be located and began building barracks and barbed wire fencing. The purpose of this construction was unknown to any of the local population at the time. Even then, the Germans were recruiting residents of the nearby village of Wólka Okrąglik for construction work. From then on, I, too, had to work every other day or two transporting building materials until the area was liberated by the Red Army.

While in 1940 and 1941, the number of local residents employed in construction work was insignificant and limited to peasants from nearby villages, in 1942 and 1943, the population of not only nearby villages but also the entire Kosów Commune was mobilized for the construction.

In 1941, SS officers arrived at the camp and assumed command.

In the summer of 1942, a surge in inmates began arriving. Some were brought in by train, others by car, and others were brought on foot from nearby settlements.

The camp's inmates were primarily Poles and Jews. Roma were also brought in. Poles outnumbered the Jews in this camp. The majority of the Jews were artisans and intellectuals. The inmates were used for a wide variety of labor. On average, the number of inmates remained around 2,000. This number was periodically replaced.

I'd like to describe the nature of the work performed by the prisoners. Trains carrying military uniforms and equipment, primarily civilian clothing, regularly arrived at the camp. I had to transport this equipment from the train cars to the camp, where dozens of people were busy sorting it. It was striking that civilian clothing and bedding outnumbered military items. You could find dresses, skirts, suits, coats, children's clothing, blankets, sheets, scarves, and much, much more. You could also find a beautiful new winter coat, children's socks, a blood-stained Russian-style military tunic, and a German greatcoat. All of this was sorted, packed, and then transported back to the trains.

Men and women prisoners worked in a sand quarry, on the railroad tracks, felled trees, uprooted trees, and laid a highway.

Work began at 6:00 a.m. and, unless there was an emergency, finished at 5:00 p.m. They were issued 200 grams of bread per day. In the morning, they were given soup made from a few potatoes and water. The same for lunch. Coffee for dinner.

Hunger and backbreaking labor, coupled with a peculiar system of torture and abuse, all contributed to a significant death rate among the prisoners. Every day, eight to ten corpses of people who had died of starvation could be seen. By evening, they were buried. This spring, I witnessed such an incident: a train carrying supplies arrived. A team of Jewish prisoners was assigned to unload them. One Jew, barely able to drag his feet, was led by the arms by two others. They walked him a short distance and then laid him on the ground, giving him a chance to rest. As soon as he lay on the ground, a German ran up and struck him over the head with all his might with his rifle. It was a fatal blow. At that moment, another Jew, apparently a close friend, fell upon the corpse. The German swung again and killed him too.

In March 1944, two Poles from a group of seven working in the forest escaped. The Germans managed to apprehend them. They were shot that same day. All the Poles in the group were also shot, even though they had nothing to do with their escape. Among those killed was a man I knew, Lakh, from the village of Sieracin. Beatings with sticks on the head and face became so ingrained in camp life that even now it's difficult to recall a single instance. Almost all the prisoners constantly bore marks of beatings.

Beginning in July 1942, a surge in trains carrying Jews began arriving at Camp No. 2, aptly named the death camp. Almost daily for a year, between one and four trains, more often four, passed our village of Wólka Okrąglik. Each train typically consisted of 60 cars. The cars were marked in chalk with the words "120," "150," and "180," corresponding to the number of people in each car. The cars were tightly sealed. Air could only enter through small windows. Terrible screams, the groans of old people, and the cries of children could be heard coming from the cars. Children could be heard screaming, "Mama, save me," in various languages. No water was provided in the cars. Moreover, any attempt to obtain water from [illegible] was met with execution. Guards fired endlessly into the cars. There were other cases: guards [illegible] gave money and gold items, promising to get water in exchange. However, as soon as they received the money, they would start yelling at the people dying of thirst and, of course, never hand over the water.

In July 1943, a train stopped near the village of Wólka. Heart-rending cries of "Water!" could be heard from every train car. The villagers tried to pass on the water, but the guards opened fire. Meanwhile, the people in the cars—men, women, and children—began breaking down the walls and jumping out. The guards opened fire on the defenseless, thirsty people. One hundred people were killed that day. Four bodies of children were also thrown out of the cars; they had died of suffocation, as there were no signs of gunshot wounds. The guards fired explosive bullets. This was clear from the nature of the wounds and the significant tissue ruptures caused by these bullets.

In our village, all 100 murdered Jews were buried by the local population of Wólka. I also took part in the funeral. The documents showed that the train was carrying Jews from Siedlce, Kovno, and Lubartów to the camp.

At Treblinka station, the train was split into three sections of 20 cars each because the camp's spur line couldn't accommodate more than 20 cars. As soon as a special locomotive pushed the cars into the camp grounds, the screams of the tormented people in the cars, premonitions of their fate or otherwise knowledge of it, grew louder. At the same time, to drown out the screams, the camp orchestra began to play.

Every day, trains carrying tens of thousands of people arrived at the camp, but no one ever left. I wasn't on the camp grounds itself. Therefore, I didn't witness all the details of the mass murder, but as a resident of a nearby village, I saw enough to understand the entire mechanism of extermination. For the first six months, the camp was filled with the sounds of people screaming, numerous rifle shots, and the incessant roar of an excavator. No matter how hard the Germans tried to hide it, we heard rumors that everyone arriving at the camp was stripped naked and immediately sent to the so-called "bathhouse," where they were killed. Then, hundreds of corpses were thrown into pits and covered with earth. But the stench of corpses was so strong that it filled not only the nearby villages but was felt for up to 30 kilometers. The local population understood what Camp No. 2 was. It was no coincidence that it was called the "death camp." The Germans realized they'd completely exposed themselves, that the people were privy to their atrocities. So, after six months, they began burning all the corpses. This didn't help them conceal what was happening behind the barbed wire and earthen ramparts.

For an entire year, plumes of smoke billowed over the camp, and several enormous fires were visible from afar. We, the residents of Wólka, barely breathed fresh air that year. The stench of corpses [illegible] smelled like burning human flesh. Periodically, every three or four days, a train of three to twenty train cars would transport the ashes to various [illegible] locations near and far from the camp. I personally, on German orders, often had to carry this ashes from the train unloading points across fields and roads. Even now, a year after the cessation of this diabolical death factory, enormous piles of ash can be seen on all the roads closest to the camp.

After the Jewish revolt, fires were still burning in the camp for about [illegible].

I can't add anything more. My words are written down accurately and were read to me [signature/].

Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Senior Lieutenant of Justice [signature/]

Interrogation protocol of Wanda Pawłowska regarding the functioning of the Treblinka labor camp. [Village of Huta], September 24, 1944.

September 24, 1944. Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness:

Wanda Józefowna Pawłowska, born in 1925, native of the village of Huta, Sokołów County, Warsaw Voivodeship, a Polish woman of peasant origin, with a fourth-grade education. Resides in the village of Huta, Sokołów County.

Warned of liability for giving false testimony under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR /signature/.

In 1941, the Germans built a camp about two kilometers from Treblinka station. I didn't see it myself, but I heard from conversations that they brought a lot of Jews to this camp and killed them there. Residents of all the surrounding villages went to this camp and sold bread, milk, and other food to the prisoners. On June 14, 1943, my sister Stanislava Pavlovskaya and I decided to go and see what kind of camp it was, and we took some bread with us, just in case. We arrived at a camp filled only with Jews; as I later learned, this camp was called a "death camp." We approached the camp from the east, through the forest. Behind the barbed wire, we saw about 20 Jews uprooting tree stumps. We saw nothing else, as a high earthen rampart and a barbed wire fence entwined with branches ran through the camp. What was behind them was not visible. As we were walking near the camp, two Ukrainian Zugvahmans rode up behind us, grabbed us, and took us to the camp, to a barrack where the Ukrainians were sleeping. This was already getting dark. We spent the night in this barrack, and the next morning at dawn we were taken to a "work camp" where Poles were staying. Therefore, we did not see what the "death camp" was like. In the work camp, we were placed in a barrack where 283 Polish women had already been placed. The Polish men were in another barrack, behind barbed wire, where Jews were also kept. My sister and I stayed in the camp until July 9, 1944. My sister was sick almost all the time and lay in the infirmary, but I worked. We did various jobs: in the summer, we worked in the fields, planting and harvesting vegetables in the camp plots. During the winter, we increasingly focused on sorting German and Russian military uniforms arriving from the Russian front. Throughout the winter, 10 to 40 train cars of uniforms arrived every three days, sometimes even daily. These were mostly German uniforms, greatcoats, trousers, boots, and shoes. We had to sort through them all. The good, wearable ones were packed into bales, and the inferior ones were discarded. Then they were all taken away somewhere. The work was extremely hard; we worked for nine hours straight, with an hour-long lunch break at 12 noon. We were fed exceptionally poorly, with food that even our livestock wouldn't eat. In the morning, we were given soup consisting of two potatoes boiled in half a liter of water. In the afternoon, we were given a liter of potato or beetroot soup. In the evening, we were given half a liter of dirty coffee and 200 grams of bread. The harsh conditions meant that many women became very ill, and some died. My sister, Stanislava Pavlovskaya, became ill from the hard work and spent most of her time in the infirmary. She is still very ill and bedridden. To top it all off, there were beatings. Unterschaftführer Stumpe, who supervised the work of women and men, especially frequently beat women. Ukrainian guards also carried out beatings. In June 1943, one guard let me go home for a few hours, and when Stumpe found out about this, he came to our barracks and began to beat me with his fists on the head and face. He beat me until my head and face were swollen. That same month, the assistant commandant, a German named Linden, beat my sister Stanislava Pavlovskaya for finding cigarettes on her; he hit her in the face and head with his fist, and then put her in the cellar. Unterschaftführer Schwarz was especially cruel to women. For example, around January 1944, a Polish woman, Godlesska Bolechawa from the city of Sokołów, brought several potatoes home from work to the barracks. Schwartz saw this and, in front of all the women, punched Godlesskaya to the ground and then began beating her with a whip and kicking her. He beat her so hard that Godlesskaya couldn't get out of bed for days.

In September 1943, a Polish woman, I don't know her last name, from the town of Ostowianka wanted to escape from the camp, but she was caught, brought to the camp, where they laid her on a bench, and Schwartz, Stulke, and Zugwachmann Emil began to beat her with whips, beat her until her entire body, head, and face were blackened and swollen. Her entire body was covered in wounds. The ground around the bench was spattered with blood. Such incidents were common, but now I have forgotten much of it. The men, who worked in very difficult conditions, were treated especially cruelly. They were given almost no food, as a result of which several died of hunger every day, and their bodies were carried into pits in the forest. Many Poles were beaten and shot, and not an hour went by without someone being beaten. I myself often saw how Poles and Jews were beaten and shot. I remember the following incidents well. In April 1944, a Pole named Seiferd from Węgrów got hold of some vodka and drank it. The camp commandant, whose name I don't remember, noticed this and sent Seiferd to the basement for two days, then brought him out onto the parade ground and shot him with a revolver.

In May 1944, a Pole named Buzen was sorting military uniforms and wanted to take a sweater for himself. The guards saw this, and Buzen was also taken to the parade ground and shot in front of everyone. Around the same time, a Pole escaped from the camp, and the SS and guards took his brother, who was also in the camp, and shot him. I don't know the names of these Poles. Jews were shot especially often. I personally saw several times how Jews were taken to the forest in groups of 8-14 people and killed there. Jews who were weak and unable to work were also killed. Especially many Polish and Jewish men died in the summer of 1944, when typhus raged in the camp and 10-12 people died daily for several months.

Question: Name the camp staff members responsible for all the atrocities committed in the camp.

Answer: Of the individuals responsible for all the atrocities committed in the camp, I remember the following:

1. Unterschaftführer Schwarz – a German about 40 years old, tall, black-haired, black-eyed, and thin. He personally beat women and shot men.
2. Workshop Supervisor Unterschaftführer Stumpe – a German about 30 years old, tall, black-haired, and dark-skinned. He personally beat women. He supervised the work teams and assigned workers.
3. Unterschaftführer Reger – about 25 years old, short, fat, blond, round-faced, and red-faced. He was the head of the guards.
4. Shop Supervisor Lanz – a German about 40 years old, of medium height, thin, stooped, and blond. He was distinguished by the exceptional brutality of his beatings of prisoners.

I don't remember the names of the others. But I can say that all the Germans and Ukrainian guards in the camp were involved in the murder and beating of Poles and Jews.

I can't testify to anything else. The report was written down correctly from my words and was read to me /signature/.

Interrogated by military investigator, Guard Senior Lieutenant of the Justice Department /signature/

Interrogation transcript of Franciszek Ząbecki, duty officer at Treblinka Station, 1941-1944. Treblinka Station, September 24, 1944.

September 24, 1944, Treblinka station. Deputy Military Prosecutor of the 65th Guards Army, Major of Justice Mazar, questioned as a witness:

Ząbecki, Franciszek Frantsevich, born in 1907, resident of Treblinka station, located on the Siedlce-Małkinia railway line. Station manager, Polish by nationality, with a seventh-grade education.

The witness has been warned of liability for perjury. /signature/

Treblinka station is located on the Siedlce-Małkinia railway line, 12 kilometers from Kosów Lacki station. 2.5 kilometers from Treblinka station, there is a railway line that branches off to the sand quarries. I worked at the Treblinka station from May 19, 1941, until August 1944, as the station duty officer. I am currently the station chief.

Since I worked as a station duty officer from 1941 to 1944, I am well aware of how, during the German occupation of the region, trains carrying people arrived at the Treblinka death camp, which the Germans had established, for extermination.

Around September 1941, the Germans rebuilt the Treblinka labor camp, whose commandant was Hauptmann van Eupen. The Germans recruited Poles from nearby settlements as construction workers for the construction of this camp. In September 1941, prisoners began arriving at this labor camp. They arrived in train cars, by car, and on foot. The prisoners were mainly Jews and Poles. The prisoners in this camp were used by the Germans for various jobs, in particular, they worked on the railroad tracks, unloaded coal and other incoming cargo from train cars, worked in sand quarries, and performed various jobs within the camp itself. Living conditions for the prisoners were extremely harsh. They worked hard labor for 12 hours a day, sometimes more. The prisoners were fed very poorly: they were given 200 grams of bread a day and thin soup. During work, the Germans abused the prisoners, brutally beating them, and very often killing them. In the winter of 1941, I saw a group of prisoners leaving Małkinia station heading for the camp. Behind them, they dragged exhausted people by the legs, their clothes torn, and dragged them, essentially naked, through the snow. It was very common to see prisoners going to work in winter barefoot, without shoes, and very lightly dressed. The Germans' torture system was well thought out. This is evident from the fact that in the summer, when it was extremely hot, prisoners were transported to work at the Małkinia station in closed train cars, the doors of which were tightly closed, making it difficult to breathe inside. And in the fall, during the rains, prisoners were transported to work on open platforms. The Germans and guards who guarded the prisoners were always drunk. I know that they forced people to eat vomit, i.e., what they vomited on the ground while drunk, forcing the prisoners to lick up the vomit on the ground. Murder of prisoners was very common. The Germans and guards mostly killed prisoners with sticks. I know of one such case well: in the summer of 1943, a group of Jewish prisoners was working at the Treblinka station. One of the prisoners became so weak that he fell and writhed in death throes. One of the guards approached him and, taking a thick club, said, "You're still alive, dog!" He stepped on his chest and began beating him on the head with the club, turning his head into a bloody pulp.

In the camp itself, executions took place daily, many died of starvation, and a typhus epidemic raged, from which many also died.

This Treblinka labor camp, organized by the Germans, existed until August 1944, almost until the moment of the liberation of this territory from the German occupiers by Soviet troops.

However, the Germans didn't limit themselves to creating a so-called labor camp. They built a second camp next to the labor camp, specifically for the extermination of huge numbers of people, which I also want to testify about.

In May 1942, the Germans began hastily constructing a second camp, using prisoners from the labor camp as labor. Simultaneously, a special line was laid from the railway line leading to the sand quarries to this newly constructed camp. The Germans rushed to build this camp because, they said, they had been given a deadline from Berlin to complete it: June 15, 1942. As soon as construction began, signs were put up showing the way to the construction site. The signs read: "SS Sonderkommando." Construction of the camp was completed in July 1942. The railway line to the camp was laid in June 1942. In July 1942, two German railway workers named Willi Klinzmann and Rudolf Emmrich arrived at Treblinka station from Tiraspol. Upon arrival, these Germans announced that they would work at the station and direct trains to the camp. On July 23, 1942, trains carrying Jews began arriving at the Treblinka station, headed for the death camp organized by the Germans. All trains arriving at the death camp must have passed through the Treblinka station, from where they were sent to the camp by rail. Since I worked as a station duty officer, I had to receive these trains and direct them to the camp. Each arriving train usually contained 60 train cars filled with people. The arriving train was divided into three parts, each containing 20 cars, and each 20 cars were transported to the death camp by a locomotive specially allocated for this purpose at Treblinka station. This locomotive always stood at the station, awaiting the arrival of a train. It happened like this: a train arrived, the Germans Klinzmann and Emmrich would uncouple the first 20 cars ful of people, attach them to a special locomotive, and send them to the camp. At the camp, these 20 cars were unloaded and brought back on the same special locomotive. Then another 20 train cars followed to the camp, and so on. This was done this way because the area in the camp where people were unloaded was designed to accommodate no more than 20 train cars at a time. After all the arriving people had been unloaded from all the train cars in the camp, the empty train would form up and depart. It took no more than two hours to deliver each 20 train cars to the camp, unload them of people, and deliver these 20 cars back to the Treblinka station. The entire train was unloaded at the camp and reassembled at the station for dispatch (empty) in approximately 5 hours. The trains that brought people to the death camp for extermination typically consisted of freight cars. The doors were tightly closed, and the windows were covered with barbed wire. Each train was guarded by a group of up to 40 guards. Every carriage was packed to the brim with people. Each carriage had its capacity written in chalk. Each carriage held up to 200 people, making it terribly stuffy. The people in the train cars stripped naked and asked for water through the windows. The guards guarding the cars—Germans, Ukrainians, and Latvians—took valuables and money, promising to give them something to drink, but in most cases, they took the valuables and gave them almost no water. The guards guarding the train cars were drunk and, in response to the people inside the cars' cries for water, opened fire on them. These guards often fired on cars filled with people for no apparent reason. When a train carrying people arrived at the station to be exterminated at the death camp, there was continuous shooting. As I mentioned above, it was drunken guards shooting at the people in the train cars. It was commonplace for most of the cars on each train to contain the corpses of people who had died from the unbearable conditions in the cars and were killed by guards. The Germans took no account of any of this. Under such horrific conditions, they transported women to the camp, who had given birth en route, dying either in the cars or later in the death camp. I remember one such incident. In August or September 1942, a train carrying people arrived at the Treblinka station. It arrived in the evening, and the camp didn't accept the train until the next morning. During the night, prisoners in several train cars tore apart the wire that covered the windows and attempted to escape, but drunken guards opened fire and killed many. The entire railway line at the station was littered with corpses. The next day, three flatcars were needed to remove them.

Some prisoners, not knowing where they had arrived, asked through the train window, "Where is the big city of Treblinka, where we are supposed to work in the factories?" Others asked, "Where is the Treblinka prison camp, where we are supposed to get land and work."

When people learned that death awaited them, wailing and screaming erupted in the train cars. In these cases, guards fired into the cars and killed the people.

From July 23, 1942, until August 1943, one to four trains arrived at Treblinka station every day. Each train held between 100 and 200 people. Most trains held between 100 and 120 people. Each train typically contained 60 cars, but some consisted of 45-50 cars. Thus, each train carried between 5,000 and 6,000 people.

During the year the death camp operated, there were three two- to three-week gaps when no trains arrived. For a total of ten months, one to four trains arrived daily, loaded with people to be exterminated at the death camp.

Having worked as a station duty officer all this time and receiving these trains, I can confidently assert that for ten months, on average, two trains arrived daily, and each train carried between 5,000 and 6,000 people, including women and children, to be exterminated in the death camp. I categorically assert that no less than 3 million people were transported through Treblinka station to the death camp for extermination. It should also be kept in mind that people were brought to the death camp for extermination not only by train, but also by car and on foot.

At first, trains carrying people arrived from Warsaw and other cities and towns in Poland. Later, alongside trains arriving from Polish towns, trains also arrived from Germany, Greece, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and from cities such as Białystok, Grodno, and Wołkowysk.

I know that trains carrying people for extermination arrived from the above-mentioned countries from conversations with Germans, from stories told by the people arriving in the trains themselves, and also from the following: in cases where trains arrived from Bulgaria and Greece, the train commandant had tickets for each person brought in. The Germans confiscated these tickets from the train commandants and sent them to the railway directorate in Krakow. When trains were expected to arrive from Germany (including Austria), Poland, and cities in Belarus, a telegram was sent indicating the train's origin. Jews brought from Germany arrived in most cases in trains made up of passenger cars.

The mass influx of transports of people ceased after the prisoner uprising that took place at the death camp on August 2, 1943. After that, only five transports arrived at the camp. Many transports of Jews proceeded to Lublin, to the Majdanek camp.

Question: What do you know about the death camp itself?

Answer: I personally never visited the death camp, but I know from accounts by German railway workers that a semblance of a station was created there. Signs were posted: "To Białystok," "To Wołkowysk," "Goods Ticket Office," "Railway Master," "Station Duty Officer," and others. I don't know how people were exterminated in the death camp. When they burned the corpses, which was the case for almost the entire existence of this death camp, the flames could be seen from far away and the air was thick with the smell of burning flesh. It was hard to breathe.

Question: Was there any accounting of arriving trains at the station?

Answer: Every arriving and arriving train was recorded by the station duty officer in the train register. These registers were located in the station building, which was burned during the Germans' retreat.

Question: Who was the head of the Treblinka station during the period the camp was in operation?

Answer: Until February 1943, the stationmaster was Józef Pronicki, who was transferred to Warsaw. From February 1943 to August 1944, the stationmaster was Józef Kuzminski. He currently works at the Siedlce railway station.

I can't add anything further to my testimony. It was written down correctly from my words and read aloud to me in Russian, which I understand, and I hereby sign.

Interrogated by: Deputy Military Prosecutor of the 65th Guards Army, Major of Justice /signature/

Interrogation protocol of senior railway worker Lucjan Puchała about conditions of detention in the Treblinka labor camp and the typhus epidemic in December 1943. Village of Wólka Dolna, September 24, 1944.

September 24, 1944. Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, military investigator of the 65th Army's Military Prosecutor's Office, interrogated the following as a witness, who testified:

Puchała Lucjan, born in 1897, native and resident of the village of Wólka Okrąglik, Kosów Commune, Sokołów County, Pole, 7th grade education, senior worker at the Kosów railway station.

I have been warned of liability for refusing to testify and for giving false testimony /signature/.

On the merits of the case, I testified:

From June 6, 1942, to May 15, 1943, I worked as a foreman on the railway line from Treblinka Station to the Treblinka camp. The length of the railway on this section was 5 kilometers.

My duties included repairing the line and loading sand from the quarry near Treblinka Camp No. 1, the so-called labor camp, into railroad cars. During my time working on the railroad, between one and four trains arrived at the camp daily. However, one or two trains arrived only rarely; usually, three or four. With almost rare exceptions, all trains consisted of 60 cars.

The number of people in the train cars was always written in chalk on the side. This number fluctuated between 150 and 2[illegible]. The cars arrived from various European countries. I remember well that they brought hundreds and thousands of Jewish people from cities in Poland, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, and occupied Russian cities.

It was easy to recognize where the cars were coming from by the following signs: people threw their documents, photographs, and money through the windows.

Furthermore, Jews from Belgium and France were transported in passenger cars. Those from nearby areas already knew about the death camp. Those from other countries, however, were clearly unaware of their fate. The Germans convinced them they would be sent to work in Ukraine. The trains arriving from France, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Romania [illegible] weren't as crowded as those arriving from Polish cities.

It was even common to see a train car occupied by just one family. This, admittedly, was very rare; the Germans achieved a specific goal: they allowed them to take with them more belongings, which were later confiscated at the camp.

I was unable to enter Camp No. 2. Not only were strangers barred, but even the guards arriving with the trains, the locomotive crew, and the service personnel of the locomotives that brought the trains to the camp were also barred. The locomotive had to deliver the cars to the camp, while remaining outside. And every time a train entered the camp, screams, groans, and cries of people could be heard. To ensure that this expression of grief and suffering of the doomed people did not spill beyond the camp, a brass band began playing as soon as the train arrived. Its sounds drowned out the screams. More than once, on the stretch between Treblinka station and the camp, I witnessed men, and often children, breaking through the barred window and planks of a moving train car and jumping to the ground, but very few managed to escape. The train guards usually executed anyone for the slightest attempt to escape. Therefore, gunfire could often be heard in the train cars. On May 14, 1943, I was dismissed from work and transferred to Camp No. 1 as a prisoner.

The immediate reason for my transfer to the camp was delivering bread to prisoners working on railway repairs. I also delivered letters from them to their families. This became known to the Germans, and I was subsequently transferred. I was used for various menial jobs: carrying construction materials, chopping wood, and the like.

The regime was as follows. We'd wake up at 5:00 a.m., work from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., then take a lunch break. Work continued from 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Often, work continued into the night.

We were given only 150 grams of bread a day. For breakfast, we had soup made from water and one or two unpeeled potatoes. For lunch, the same soup, the only difference being that if a horse died, we were given meat. For dinner, we were given coffee. People were beaten for any reason.

One German knocked out two of my teeth! Once I was given 25 blows with a stick. The Germans and guards committed terrible abuses in the camp. Both Jews and Poles were subjected to beatings and abuse. Prisoners were shot every day. If the Germans and guards managed to detain those who escaped from the camp, they shot them; if not, dozens of other completely innocent people. In October 1942, <two> [illegible] from Warsaw escaped from the camp. In retaliation for their escape, on orders from the Germans, the guards shot [illegible] prisoners. Among them were [illegible] from the village of Telash, [illegible], Stanislav Matchuk from Kosów, and [illegible] from the village of Sobotka.

In August 1943, two people were shot for escaping alone. I was there when they were taken away to be shot. In full view of all the prisoners, many Jews were killed by the Germans and Ukrainian guards with special wooden mallets.

From November 12 to December 20, 1943, 146 people died in the camp from starvation, beatings, and backbreaking labor, including two acquaintances from Kosów—Bernablum and Kużak.

I still have the list of the dead that I kept in the camp. The fact is that in November and December 1943, I was assigned as an assistant to Dr. Pocharek from Żyrardów. Pocharek was taken hostage. No medical care was provided to the sick in the camp. However, in December, a typhus epidemic broke out. The Germans were terrified of the disease and therefore isolated all the sick Poles, and Pocharek was assigned to fight the outbreak. There were clearly insufficient facilities. Then, on December 10, German SS men and guards shot 106 Jewish laborers in the forest behind the barracks.

By that time, there were 145 Jewish laborers in total. Before the execution, the Germans selected the healthy ones in front of all the prisoners. The criterion for health in this case was the ability to run. People would constantly run around the square like a herd. After all, everyone knew what awaited them if they couldn't run to please the Germans. And, as I showed, 106 of the 145 Jewish laborers were shot.

None of the German measures against typhus were effective. Typhus spread due to the starvation and filthy conditions in which prisoners lived.

And since the sick weren't given adequate nutrition, they couldn't cope.

Prisoner Lebuda Lutzman, feverish and with a high temperature of 40°C, jumped out of a window. A guard detained him. At that moment, SS officer Lanz approached. He asked the guard what had happened. The guard explained that the sick man had jumped out of the window in a fever. Without saying anything, Lanz shot Lebuda dead with a pistol. While assisting Dr. Pocharek, I kept a record of the deaths from November 12 to December 20. I am passing this list, which I have preserved, on to the investigative authorities as sufficiently convincing evidence of the order that existed in the camp. I must make a disclaimer. When I kept this list, I did not think it would be useful to the investigative authorities. At the time, I had something else in mind: to inform relatives of the deaths of their loved ones. Many still do not know where and under what circumstances their loved ones died.

I was liberated from the camp on December 20, 1943.

I have nothing more to add. This is written down accurately from my words and was read to me [signature/].

Military investigator of the military prosecutor's office [signature/]

Plan of Treblinka, Drawn by the Soviets on September 24, 1944.

Interrogation protocol of local Władysław Kruk about the Treblinka death camp and the last days of the labor camp. Village of Wólka Dolna, September 25, 1944.

V[illage] of Wólka Dolna, Kosów Commune, Sokołów County, September 25, 1944. Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, interrogated the below-named witness, who testified:

Władysław Kruk, born in 1884, native and resident of the village of Wólka Okrąglik, Kosów Commune, Sokołów County, Polish, semi-literate, farmer.

Warned of liability for refusing to testify and for giving false testimony /signature/.

He testified regarding the case:

I have lived my entire life in the village of Wólka Okrąglik.

In 1941, Treblinka Camp No. 1, the so-called labor camp, began operating.

We, residents of the surrounding villages, could see that large numbers of Poles and Jews were being brought to the camp by train and truck. They were used outside the camp grounds in a sand quarry and on the railway line.

Shots could often be heard coming from the camp. The camp prisoners reached a state of extreme exhaustion.

They worked long hours and received almost nothing in terms of food.

By July 1942, construction of Treblinka Camp No. 2, rightly called a death camp, was completed. Our village, Wólka, is the closest settlement to both camps. Wólka is separated from the camp by a distance of 1–1.5 kilometers. Therefore, although we were denied access to either camp, we saw a lot—at least enough to understand the camp's purpose as a killing facility for hundreds of thousands of people, primarily Jews.

Beginning in July 1942, trains carrying Jews began arriving at Camp No. 2. Three or four trains, each with 60 cars, arrived daily for almost the entire year. Each car bore the inscriptions "100," "110," "150," "180," "200," and sometimes "280." This number corresponded to the number of people held in the car. The trains sometimes stopped near the village of Wólka. I repeatedly saw the distraught faces of men, women, and children peering out of the small windows. Cries for "water" could be heard constantly from all the cars, but none of us local residents could bring water to the cars, because armed Germans and Ukrainian guards stood by the cars and shot into the cars without warning—at those asking for water and at those carrying it to the cars. Some men and women broke through the train car boards and attempted to escape. But the guards brutally shot them. After each train, corpses littered the tracks.

When the trains entered the camp, we could hear the terrible screams of the people. No matter how hard the Germans tried to drown out the cries with their orchestra, we could clearly hear the cries of hundreds of people. Trains full of people arrived at the camp every day, but no one returned.

At first, the Germans dumped all the corpses into pits. The constant roar of the excavator, reportedly covering the corpses with earth, was audible. The stench of corpses permeated not only our village but was felt tens of kilometers from the camp. For a whole year, every resident of the surrounding villages felt as if they were living on corpses, sleeping on corpses, working on corpses.

After a few months, the Germans began burning the corpses. They burned day and night. For a whole year. Even during the day, the area was somehow dark: clouds of smoke obscured the sky. The flames of several fires were especially clearly visible at night. The smell of roasting human flesh was constant. Therefore, neither the barbed wire fence nor the earthen rampart separating us from the camp—nothing could hide from us the terrible truth about the daily life of this death factory.

One day in early July, a guard came to my house and demanded that I take him to a neighboring village to see some girls. I refused. He repeated his demand and punched me in the face. Despite this, I refused again.

On the third day, two guards came for me and took me to Camp No. 1. At the camp itself, they told me I was a prisoner. That was the price I paid for my disobedience. I spent three weeks in the camp. During that time, I performed various jobs: loading trains at Małkinia Station, packing civilian and military clothing and other items into bundles (each bundle had some kind of label on it), working in a sand quarry, and chopping wood.

Work began at 7:00 a.m. and ended at 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. They were given up to 200 grams of bread per day. In the morning, there was coffee for breakfast, soup made of water with one or two unpeeled potatoes for lunch, and coffee or more soup for dinner. I was there during the camp's final days. There was a sense of confusion among the Germans as the Red Army approached. Prisoners were beaten, but according to those who had been in the camp for a long time, less so than before.

In late July 1944, under the pretext of stopping a planned Jewish armed uprising, the Germans one evening cordoned off the Jewish barracks, led about five hundred Jews out onto the parade ground before our eyes, and ordered them to lie down. Then, in groups, they were ordered to stand up and lower their trousers to restrict their movement, and then led out into the forest to be shot. The shooting of Jews continued throughout the evening. Polish workers, including myself, were ordered to bury the bodies.

I can't add anything else. It was written down correctly and read to me [signature/].

Military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Senior Lieutenant of Justice [signature/]

Transcript of Abram Goldfarb's Additional Interrogation Regarding the Operation of the Gas Chambers. Sterdyń, September 26, 1944.

On September 26, 1944, Senior Lieutenant of Justice Yurovsky, military investigator of the 65th Army's [Russian] Prosecutor's Office, interrogated the below-named witness, who testified:

Goldfarb Abram Isaakovich (identities known)

In addition to my testimony, I report:

In the gas chamber—a three-chamber building for the extermination of Jews—an ordinary tractor engine was in operation. I do not know the make of the engine.

The fuel used was so-called ropa—a dark, somewhat viscous liquid.

Near this building and separately, under a special shelter, numerous iron barrels of this fuel could always be seen.

I cannot add anything further. This has been recorded correctly and has been read to me. /signature/

Military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army, senior lieutenant of justice /signature/

Interrogation protocol of Samuel Rajzman regarding the functioning of the Treblinka death camp. Hungarian, September 26, 1944.

City of Węgrów, September 26, 1944. Military investigator of the military prosecutor's office of the 65th Army, senior lieutenant of justice Yurovsky, interrogated the below-named witness, who testified:

RAJZMAN SAMUEL YAKOVLEVICH, born in 1922, native and resident of the city of Węgrów, Jewish, secondary education, director of a sawmill export plant in the city of Warsaw

I have been warned of liability for refusing to testify and for giving false testimony /signature/.

On the merits of the case, I testified:

From September 27, 1942, to August 2, 1943, I was imprisoned in Treblinka Camp No. 2, rightly known as the "death camp." I experienced, felt, and witnessed so much during my time there. Much of what I encountered remains etched in my memory. Moreover, I managed to smuggle out of the camp my notes, which I had kept throughout my stay. As part of a conspiratorial organization formed in the camp from Jewish prisoners, I kept records detailing the activities of this hellish death camp. Similar notes were also made by other organizers of this conspiratorial group preparing for the uprising—an engineer from Warsaw, Galewski, Kurland, and Rosenblum.

We believed that if even one of us managed to escape from the camp, the material we had collected would, at a certain time, be made available to representatives of international justice. Rosenblum was killed, Galewski and Kurland, most likely in Warsaw. Therefore, at present, I am the only person in possession of invaluable, truthful, and accurate information about the monstrous plan the Germans carried out at Treblinka Camp No. 2 for the racial extermination of the Jewish population from various European countries. I therefore ask you to believe that all the specific examples and figures I wish to present are a true, undistorted reflection of reality. The collection of this material, under cover of secrecy, is the result of the collective labor of a group of camp prisoners during our year-long stay there.

From 1937 until my transfer to the Treblinka camp in September 1942, I lived in Warsaw without leaving, where I worked as the bureau director for the Overseas Export-Import Association of Medzizhetsky and Co. From October 1941, I was in the Jewish ghetto established by the German authorities. In July 1942, the authorities widely announced that all Jews, regardless of age, would be resettled to the East. At the same time, the ghetto was surrounded by a significant network of guard posts. Guard duty was carried out by German soldiers and Ukrainian guards. With this first step, the Germans deprived all those living in the ghetto of the opportunity to communicate with the outside world. In the last ten days of July, the deportation of Jews began. In the new announcements that were specially posted for this reason, they announced, firstly, that work and bread would be guaranteed in the East, and secondly, that everyone was allowed to take with them all valuables and money, and, in addition, up to 15 kilograms of other things.

It must be admitted that at that time we weren't concerned about our fate. Each of us believed that somewhere in Russia, things would be much easier for us. None of us had any doubts about this German undertaking. Moreover, the famine that had gripped the ghetto, and the significant morbidity and mortality caused by it—all this, to some extent, even pushed people to leave as quickly as possible. Life in the ghetto had become unbearable, and it was no coincidence that many of its residents volunteered to evacuate to the East. From the very first days, trains carried 6,000 to 10,000 people. People took everything they could carry, and, of course, significantly more than the established quota of 15 kg. For obvious reasons, no one checked the weight of their belongings during loading.

During the first few days, the Germans deported the elderly, children, women, and men not employed in German enterprises. Those employed in German factories and workshops remained for a time. The Germans attempted a tactic: as soon as the deportation of Jews from the ghetto began, they began seizing Jewish-owned businesses, workshops, and various institutions, announcing a labor recruitment drive, guaranteeing that all those who accepted the job would remain in Warsaw. They demanded a share contribution of 10,000–15,000 zlotys from those applying for the company. With incredible difficulty, people met this requirement, and many took jobs with German firms solely to remain in their hometown. And then the deception the Germans constantly resorted to was laid bare.

Trucks filled with people being transported to the station roamed the ghetto streets day and night. The Germans carried out endless roundups. Sometimes they would forcibly remove a family, temporarily leaving behind the main worker—the head of the family. Sometimes they would cordon off a factory, declare it legally abandoned, and then drive all the workers to the station in trucks, leaving their families behind.

I too experienced these monstrous forms of evacuation. On September 6, I returned from work to find that the Germans had taken my wife away. My example is not isolated—it was a fairly common occurrence. The eviction of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, for example, lasted two months. Of the 600,000 Jews living in the ghetto, by September 27, the day I left Warsaw, as a professor at the Warsaw Medical Institute later told me in the Treblinka camp, only up to 30,000 remained.

On September 27, 1942, the owner of the company where I worked, Wilhelm Toebbens, gathered all the workers and announced that we should go into the yard, where only our documents would be checked, and then we would return to work immediately. He even gave his word of honor and warned that there was no need to change clothes, as we would not be staying in the yard for long. There were 36 people in the department where I worked. We went out into the yard in our work clothes. By this time, about a thousand people from several other departments had gathered in the yard. At that moment, we noticed several armed SS men loading 50-60 people into cars and driving them to the station. I was among those taken away. A train of 60 cars was ready for us. Each car held 120 people. None of us had anything except our work clothes. We had eaten nothing all day and didn't have a single piece of bread. The train covered the distance from Warsaw to Treblinka at 4:00 PM. The car was so crowded that no one had the opportunity to lie down, let alone sit down. The heat was unbearable. With so many people in the car, there was only one small observation window. Thirst was especially tormenting for all of us. We were strictly forbidden from obtaining water from outside. And on those very rare occasions when the guards guarding the car did pass us half a glass of water, they took large sums of money and gold.

The train stopped at Tłuszcz station. One of our workers, Esther Friedman, fainted, and when I told the guard, he demanded 500 zlotys for half a glass of water. At the next station, everyone with a gold watch gave it up for a glass of water. Most had neither money nor watches.

On the way to Treblinka station, three women and two men died from lack of water and fresh air. Among them were Esther Friedman and Regina Serok. The shooting continued throughout the entire journey. In our car, no one knew what awaited us or where we were going. But in the other cars, some apparently had some knowledge of this and, naturally, tried to escape through the observation window or by breaking out boards. The guards brutally suppressed the slightest attempt to break free, shooting without warning. Others fired indiscriminately into the cars. So when we arrived at the Treblinka camp, almost every car was riddled with dead bodies, riddled with bullets. At least 500 corpses were carried out of the cars onto the platform.

It's worth noting that at Treblinka station, 3-4 kilometers from the camp itself, our train of 60 cars was divided into three trains. I was in one of the first 20 cars. When the car door opened upon arriving at the camp, we immediately noticed an unusual commotion on the platform, which, it was quite obvious to us, was being caused by the Germans and guards who had greeted our group. They were running around the platform in disarray, shouting, urging us on—in short, an immediate atmosphere created that prevented us from properly orienting ourselves to the circumstances we had found ourselves in or understanding what awaited us. This noise and bustle were nothing more than a psychological maneuver, carefully planned and orchestrated by the German camp administration. Without giving us time to reflect, all the women were immediately separated from the men. The women were then taken to a barrack located to the left of the square and ordered to take off their boots and stockings, leave all of this near the barrack, and go inside themselves.

We men were asked to undress completely within one or two minutes, right there in the square. Up to twenty Germans and guards milled around us, beating us with sticks for the slightest hesitation. One of the Germans announced that we were to hand over all personal belongings—clothing, shoes, documents, money, and jewelry—for safekeeping while we were in the bathhouse.

Even then, the situation was clear to all of us. The piles of personal belongings outside the barracks, the incessant roar of the excavator, the heavy stench of corpses emanating from another part of the camp—all of this spoke convincingly of one thing: we were about to die. Each of us was overcome by a single desire: to die as quickly as possible. It was clear to everyone that death was inevitable, that death was watching us, and, knowing the German nature, prone to prolonging human suffering, we feared that this procedure, this preparatory procedure, would be lengthy.

So we all asked the Jewish workers passing us not about how to escape death, but about how long they would have to endure the torment.

As I stood there, already undressed, I was noticed by an acquaintance of mine, engineer Galewski from Warsaw, who served as the foreman of the Jewish work brigade at the camp. He immediately went to the camp commander and, upon returning, suggested that I get dressed. As he later told me, I was then introduced to the camp commander as a suitable candidate for a translator, since I knew several foreign languages.

Of the entire train of 8,000 people, only three were selected in this way—me and two excellent shoemakers. Within minutes, everyone else was herded off to the "bathhouse." A group of Jewish workers and I were tasked with carrying the clothes everyone had abandoned in the square to Barrack A. All this time, we were beaten without provocation by Ukrainian guards and Germans who watched our every move. They beat us tirelessly, with whips and sticks, so much so that half an hour later, when I met the two shoemakers from my train, we didn't recognize each other. Our faces were covered in bruises, contusions, and bloody welts. The Germans even had a special term for this beating procedure for new arrivals: "Feuertaufe" ("baptism of fire"). We worked like this until noon. During this time, another train arrived from Częstochowa and Piotrków. Everything was repeated with the same sequence. By 12 noon, 16,000 Jews had been sent to the "bathhouse." While I was working, I got into conversation with workers who had already been in the camp for some time. They told me that the same fate awaited us all—death. We wouldn't have to wait long—8-10 days—and then others would take our place. I felt a little uneasy.

I must admit quite frankly that I was then offended by engineer Galewski, who did not give me the opportunity to immediately end my life along with his colleagues at the enterprise, thereby saving himself from bullying and torment.

Taking advantage of the lunch break, I approached Galewski and expressed my dissatisfaction with the patronizing attitude he was showing me. He replied curtly, "Don't rush. We'll do something here. If you see people from the other trains who can be relied upon, let me know. I'll try to save them." And then a spark of hope and faith ignited in me that I could somehow take revenge on the monsters. I wasn't thinking about my own salvation then. In fact, I was convinced of the opposite. However, the desire for revenge began to overwhelm me in a profound way. Therefore, the rest of my stay in the camp was devoted to this goal.

Galewski assigned me to Barrack A, sorting property; more specifically, I collected and sorted eyeglasses. For several hours a day, I was used to translate documents from Polish, Russian, and French into German. Thus, my stay in the camp was significantly eased; I was, to a greater extent than before, shielded from the systematic executions to which the Germans and guards subjected people, and, most importantly, I was able to observe and work more within the conspiratorial organization.

On September 29th, a train from Węgrów arrived. Upon learning of this, I went out to the barracks to get a better look at everyone who had arrived. I was born in Węgrów, grew up in Węgrów, and spent my best school years there. My mother, sister, and two brothers were in Węgrów. And I saw them there, in Treblinka, on their way to their deaths. My mother, sister, and brother noticed me immediately. My mother clutched her head and let out a terrible scream. I don't remember how or what happened to me. I then found myself in the arms of a friend. He brought me back to my senses. At that moment, a guard named Grisha approached me and asked what had happened. I gathered my last strength, sat up, and pretended nothing was wrong. Because if I'd shown the slightest sign of illness, I would have been immediately sent to the so-called "infirmary." An infirmary is a pit where people were shot. This guard was still going to send me to this infirmary—he made this quite clear—but I was saved by the senior guard, Sashka, who approached us and was the only decent person on the entire staff. For the rest of the time, I was busy with the same work: translating the documents of the dead, sorting property, and loading this property into train cars.

The regime in the work team was as follows.

We got up at 5:00 a.m. At 6:00 a.m., roll call, and then work began immediately. It lasted until 12:00 p.m. We had an hour-long lunch break, and then work continued until 5:00 or 7:00 p.m. However, this was the routine under "normal circumstances." Often, we had to work much later. We, all Jewish workers, slept in a separate barracks. The bunks were arranged in two tiers, with 24 people on each tier. The filth in these rooms was unbearable. The Germans didn't provide water. From the only well located in the square, the Jewish workers could only draw a little water once every two weeks. Even in this case, it was absolutely necessary to obtain permission from the Germans. The rest of the time, despite the nature of our work—constant contact with dirty rags and old property—access to water was strictly prohibited. And it's no surprise that lice were a constant companion for everyone. In the morning, we received two glasses of coffee. And, as a rule, each of us kept one glass of coffee so we could at least wash ourselves. It's worth noting that the two glasses of coffee we received were all that made up our breakfast menu.

We received 200 grams of bread per day. Coffee in the morning, soup at lunch, a stew made from water and a few small unpeeled potatoes, and the same soup for dinner.

These sanitary living conditions, the starvation rations, and the backbreaking workload naturally led to significant morbidity. Typhus became the main scourge. At first, at the slightest sign of illness, Unterscharführer Mite would send the patient to the "infirmary" to be shot. This was the case with everyone, without exception. Somewhat later, the "izba khatykh" (sick hut) was established. Only the first two or three days of admission were patients treated. Subsequently, the sick stayed in this "izba khatykh" for a very short time, and then Mite sent them all to the "infirmary." I remember one time, twenty-five workers seriously ill with typhus were sent to the "izba khatykh" in the morning. By evening, none of them were there—they had all gone to the "infirmary." The Germans forcibly kept Warsaw's most famous laryngologist, Dr. Julian Charanzycki, with them. He, like all of us, was a prisoner, but the Germans exploited his deep knowledge in the field of medicine and resorted to his help because they did not have their own doctors. Doctor Kharanzhitsky told the Germans that it was unacceptable to send conscious patients to be shot. Mitya then ordered that people be euthanized before being sent to the "infirmary." Even those who could easily have been cured were euthanized. One can imagine the incredible suffering of those who found themselves in the "khatykh izba." Thus, people were treated with only one medicine—a bullet. That's why workers with high temperatures, reaching 39°C (102°F), went to work. However, their attempts to hide their illness were in vain. Mitya would go around everyone, peering intently into their eyes, and pointing with his finger at those whose sickly appearance betrayed them, he would point the way to the "khatykh izba." Every day, several dozen people from the work crew took their lives. Their places were taken by new arrivals to the camp. The work itself was carried out under the influence of whips. The Germans and guards would beat with whips for the slightest provocation and without any provocation, beating for the past, the present, and the future. We all walked around constantly with traces of beatings.

Three to four trains, each containing 60 train cars, arrived at the camp daily. Of course, there were days when only one or two trains arrived, but these were the exception, not the rule. Each train carried 6,000 to 7,000 Jews.

Our conspiratorial group, as I've already shown, kept meticulous records of all incoming contingents. Jews were brought to the camp from various European countries:* From Germany itself came 120,000;

• Austria – 40,000;
• Poland – 1,500,000;
• Czechoslovakia – 100,000;
• Russia – 1,000,000;
• Bulgaria and Greece – 15,000.

Thus, from the time when this record began to be kept, October 1, 1942, to August 2, 1943, a total of 2,775,000 men, women, old people and children of Jewish nationality were brought to the camp.

At Treblinka station, the trains were uncoupled into three separate trains of 20 cars each. A specially coupled locomotive pulled the trains to the camp. Before entering the camp, the guards were changed: the guards who had accompanied the trains were not allowed into the camp, handing over their duties to the camp guards. When the doors of the freight cars were opened (Jews from Poland and Russia were brought in freight cars, and Jews from other countries in passenger cars), terrifying screams and groans of distraught, exhausted people could be heard. Several hundred corpses were carried from each train onto the platform and then to the "hospital" for cremation. Dozens of armed German soldiers and Ukrainian guards scurried back and forth along the platform. They were obviously creating unnecessary fuss, urging the people on at every step. Such a panicked atmosphere was created that people leaving the carriages completely lost their heads and lost all ability to understand what was happening to them and around them.

A few months after the Treblinka Camp No. 2 began operating, when news of the monstrous atrocities committed by the Germans in this hellish death factory had spread far beyond the camp and the mere mention of Treblinka caused fear among Westerners, when the mere word Treblinka among the people sent there gave rise to protest and active resistance, manifested in various forms, the Germans undertook such a maneuver.

The camp's name, "Arbeitslager" ("Work Camp"), was changed to "Ober-Majdan" ("Main Square"), and a large sign reading "Ober-Majdan" appeared on the square immediately behind the platform. Also on the square and buildings located near the unloading area were various signs and announcements, creating the appearance of some sort of transit railway station. For example, signs reading "Białystok," "Wołkowysk," "Transfer to the East," "Ticket Office," "Information," "Telephone/Telegraph," "Railway Workshop," "No Entry," and a large station clock.

This sham calmed the crowd to some extent. As soon as they entered the square, they were lined up, men and women were separated, the former led to the right, the latter to the left. The women were asked to remove their boots and stockings, tie them all up, and leave them right there near the barracks. Then they were led into the barracks and undressed. There, driven by whips, they were required to strip naked, leave their belongings in the locker room, and carry documents, money, and jewelry.

It's worth noting that throughout the entire journey from the train to the "bathhouse," the Germans used every means necessary to rush the people, not giving them time to recover. In the second part of the barracks, all the women had their hair cut and were ordered to proceed to the bathhouse. Along the way to the bathhouse, there was a cash register where everyone was required to hand over their documents, money, and valuables. The men undressed right on the square and, urged on by the Germans and guards, carried their belongings, documents, money, and valuables to the sorting barracks. Then they were herded to the bathhouse. All sick or weak men and women, as well as most of the elderly and children, were not allowed through the "bathhouse." They were selected while still on the square and taken to the so-called infirmary. The infirmary was a pit approximately 25 x 5 x 3 meters in size, fenced in and covered on all sides by a dense row of pine saplings. Jews wearing Red Cross armbands stood at the entrance. Their function was to undress those who came. After this, the hospital chief, Unterscharführer Mentz, would arrive and shoot everyone with a submachine gun. Then they would all be thrown into a large bonfire. No one bothered to determine whether they were being burned alive or dead. The screams and groans of the wounded, but still alive, elderly and children could be heard constantly from the hospital; some were thrown into the fire alive. If mothers entered the locker room with infants, Unterscharführer Sepp, who was particularly skilled at killing children, would snatch the child from its mother, grab it by the legs, and slam the child against the wall with such force that a second blow was never necessary. I personally observed these "exercises" of Sepp's several times. Working as a sorter of glasses, I had comparatively more freedom of movement than any of the other workers. So, when a train from Warsaw arrived, I always approached the barracks, intending to find acquaintances.

It was then that I noticed the incidents I described above. During my time in the camp, I was confined to the 1st Section. I had absolutely no access to the 2nd Section, where the "bathhouse" was located and the cremation of corpses took place. Naturally, as one of the organizers of the conspiratorial group, I couldn't help but be interested in everything that was happening on the other side of the fence, where the actual murder of millions of people took place. I relied on the accounts, albeit very brief, of workers who, for one reason or another, found themselves in the 1st Section area for short periods of time. I discussed this matter extensively with Dr. Kharonzhitsky, one of the first figures in the conspiratorial organization, who was particularly interested in the killing methods. Kharonzhitsky, too, had no access to the cabins. But from what was known, he told me the following:

People were herded into large groups of so-called bathhouses. These cabins were hermetically sealed. At first, killing was done by pumping out the air, then they switched to another method: poisoning with chlorine gas and cyclone gas. The camp had a special warehouse with a large quantity (up to 15 tons) of so-called chlorene. Chlorene looked like white stones. Every day, before my eyes, barrels of this chlorene were carried to the 2nd section.

I didn't see any containers of cyclone gas. However, periodically, rarely, sealed boxes would arrive on trains, and guards would immediately transport them to the 2nd section. The motors at the bathhouses ran around the clock. I didn't hear whether carbon monoxide poisoning occurred there.

For the first months, I was told, the corpses were buried and covered with a layer of earth. Dentists would extract gold teeth as soon as the corpses were removed from the cells.

By the time I arrived at the camp, the corpses were being burned in primitive ovens. Fires blazed day and night. Clouds of smoke obscured the sky above the camp, rendering us permanently in darkness. The stench, the smell of roasting human flesh, filled every pore of our camp site and permeated our clothing, so much so that each of us felt as if we were living on the corpses themselves, sleeping on corpses, eating on corpses. The number of people killed in the camp can be judged by the number who entered, because none of them ever left.

The Germans weren't content with simply killing people. Before they sent a person into the death machine, they used every minute remaining to commit the most vile and savage tortures. They resorted to everything: physical and spiritual violence, deception, and undisguised cynicism. However, they loved to disguise all of this as humor and amusement.

I will give just a few examples of facts that I witnessed.

A train arrived from Vienna. Among the passengers was the sister of the famous Austrian psychology professor Sigmund Freud, a woman of about 50. Right there on the platform, she approached the deputy camp commandant, Untersturmführer Kurt Franz, and asked him to assign her to some light work in the office, as she was exhausted and, besides, was an accountant by trade. Franz, with astonishing politeness, asked for her identification papers. After reviewing them, he politely replied, "Yes, you are indeed Sigmund Freud's sister. Look, there's been a mistake. You are not subject to deportation from Vienna. Never mind, we'll fix it. You'll hand over all your belongings and valuables, take a bath, and then I'll send you home on the first train." He then led her to the train schedule posted on the platform and, in the most serious tone, expressed his opinion on the advisability of taking one train rather than another. This gentlemanly advice couldn't have aroused any doubt in this unfortunate woman. Following it, she handed over all her belongings to Franz and went to the "bathhouse," from which she never returned.

In May 1943, an acquaintance of mine, Associate Professor Stein of the Faculty of Medicine at Warsaw University, was brought to the camp. He introduced himself to the camp commandant, Hauptsturmführer Stangl, and asked him to find him a job in his field. Stangl asked him to wait a few minutes. Soon, Kurt Franz emerged with his dog, Bari, and set it loose on Stein. He stood to the side, smiling, watching as the dog began to tear chunks of Stein's flesh. Half-dead and covered in blood, Associate Professor Stein was carried on a stretcher to the "infirmary" and thrown into a fire.

One day in the fall of 1942, an elegantly dressed man stepped off an arriving train. Hauptsturmführer Stangl, who was on the platform at the time, saw him, greeted him enthusiastically, and led him into the chancery in a friendly manner. This surprised us all, as this newcomer was Jewish. Stengel flirted with him. After a while, they both left the camp grounds. We heard a gunshot. Stengel entered the camp alone, without his companion, and ordered the body to be taken away and carried "to the fire." Outside the infirmary, we began to remove his belongings and from his documents, we discovered that he was the brother of the Soviet ambassador to Paris, Surits.

That same day, Stangl considered his act the height of nobility, telling us that he had met Surits’s brother at some international conference and, due to connections, did not want to send him to a cell.

All property, personal belongings, money, and valuables confiscated from the hundreds of thousands of people arriving on the trains were sorted in specially designated barracks "A," "B," and "C" and then shipped to Germany.

Our conspiratorial organization had representatives in the departments responsible for sorting and packing the property to be shipped (Rosenblum, Kurland, Galewski, and myself). One of the organization's members served as a supervisor in the department, where 12-15 people were tasked with sorting money and valuables, determining their value, and packing them. He was also required to submit a daily report to the Germans. He also sent weekly reports to us. About once a week, we checked everyone's records:

From October 1, 1942, to August 2, 1943, the following were shipped to Germany:* 25 train cars of women's hair,

• 248 train cars of various clothing,
• 100 train cars of shoes,
• 22 train cars of new textiles,
• 46 train cars of pharmaceutical and chemical preparations,
• 12 train cars of various artisan tools,
• 4 train cars of surgical and other medical instruments,
• 260 train cars of blankets, pillows, carpets, and rugs,
• 400 train cars of various items (eyeglasses, gold fountain pens, combs, dishes, briefcases, umbrellas, etc.).

About 120 million in gold were exported in coins of Russian rubles, French francs, Greek drachmas and ducats, and American dollars.

In addition, 40,000 gold wristwatches, 150 kilograms of wedding rings, 4,000 carats of diamonds weighing two carats each, several thousand pearl necklaces, and paper money amounting to 2,800,000 US dollars, 400,000 British pounds, 12 million Soviet rubles, and 140 million Polish zlotys were taken away.

This figure does not include paper money intentionally burned by members of the conspiratorial organization or money appropriated by camp personnel.

Question: List the camp staff and provide a brief description of them.

Answer:# Obersturmführer Stangl – camp commandant, a German from Vienna, oversaw all camp activities. He excelled at robbing incoming prisoners, appropriating large quantities of valuables. He received a two-week leave every four weeks and always took home jewelry made from precious stones. According to rough estimates, he smuggled away jewelry worth several hundred million zlotys.

1. Untersturmführer Kurt Franz – deputy commandant, a German from Thuringia. He was the most cruel and sadistic individual. He was in charge of maintaining order and discipline in the camp; he would set a dog on the workers, then send the victim to the stake; he was an expert at hanging them by the legs; he killed people without provocation. He always demonstrated his boxing prowess on defenseless and sick people.
2. Hauptsturmführer Kicha Kutner – chief of the workers, a gendarme from Leipzig before the war. He beat up workers and sent dozens to be shot.
3. Untersturmführer Miethe – assistant to the workers' chief, a German, devoted all his time to selecting the rich for execution in the "hospital."
4. Untersturmführer Sepp Hitreider – a German from Alsace-Lorraine, was an unrivaled specialist in the murder of children.
5. Untersturmführer Mene – a German, chief of the "hospital," his specialty was the execution of the sick, weakened, elderly, and children.
6. Untersturmführer Bredow – a German from Berlin, specialized in the beating of workers.

I've listed only those members of the camp staff with whom I interacted almost daily. The entire German staff consisted of 38-40 people. The rest worked in the 2nd Section and in the office.

Question: Which high-ranking Nazi officials visited the camp?

Answer: All Germans in the camp belonged to the SS-Sonderkommando. Their seals and documents bore the SD symbol, which stands for Sonderdienst ("special service").

Three or four times during my stay in the camp, generals from Berlin and Lublin visited. During these visits, all the workers were herded into barracks.

Himmler came to the camp twice, once in September 1942, and again in July 1943. Preparations for his arrival lasted three days. The plane landed on a square near the camp both times. Himmler arrived accompanied by several high-ranking SS officials. I had seen his photographs many times in newspapers and magazines, so when he appeared at the camp, I and all the other workers recognized him immediately. He inspected the camp for 30-45 minutes and then left. The workers were in the barracks during this time. But the door was open, and we had no trouble getting a good look at him.

Question: How did you manage to escape from the camp?

Answer: Several months before the uprising, a conspiratorial organization made a bread mold of the lock on the weapons depot. On August 2, 1943, they managed to open the depot and stealthily remove 25 automatic rifles, 25 grenades, and 20 pistols. One of our conspiratorial group members, acting as a disinfectant, doused the camp buildings scheduled for burning with gasoline instead of disinfectant. After the first signal shot, the buildings were set ablaze, and all weapons in our possession were used from all sides. Workers from the 2nd Section tore down the barbed wire fence with shovels and crowbars. Germans were immediately killed—Hauptscharführer Kicha Kitner, Unterscharführer Kurt Seidel, and several others. Two hundred prisoners escaped, the rest remained. I was among the two hundred. I can't add anything more. Written down from my words correctly and read to me /signature/.

Military investigator, senior lieutenant of justice /signature/ [Khorovsky]

Interrogation protocol of local resident Józef Sopilo regarding the construction of the Treblinka death camp. Hungarian, September 26, 1944.

On September 26, 1944, the military investigator of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the 65th Army, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness a resident of the city of Węgrów, Sokołów County, Warsaw Voivodeship, Sopilo Józef Stebast'yanovich, born in 1911, native of Węgrów, driver, 7th grade education.

I have been warned about liability for giving false testimony under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR /signature/.

Until April 4, 1942, I worked as a passenger bus driver on the Sokołów-Warsaw route. Because I was 15 minutes late for work, the German owner sent me to work in the Treblinka camp for three months. They brought me to the labor camp, where I spent four days, loading sand and driving to the road construction site in Małkinia. After that, they found out I was a driver and transferred me to the garage to wash cars. Before that, the camp commandant, I don’t know his last name, ordered me to be tied up and beaten with sticks in front of all the workers, giving me 50 lashes for hiding the fact that I was a driver. On April 10, 1942, a German came and announced that an order had been received: within 14 days, a camp with barracks was to be built, fenced in with barbed wire, foundations were laid, and a railway line was to be built to this camp. And after this order, we began building the camp. On the first day, timber was cut, posts were dug in, and the territory of the future camp was surrounded by barbed wire. Over the course of nine days, we built a railway line. Near it, to the left, we built two large foundations for buildings. Between them, we dug a well. All this was also surrounded by a barbed wire fence and camouflaged with branches. To the east of these foundations, 70-80 meters away, two foundations of different sizes were built. Later, from one of the barracks, or rather, foundations, that were near the railway line, a path was laid to these foundations, fenced with barbed wire and blocked off with branches. On April 20, 1942, seven trucks with trailers approached the two sites, carrying two motors, pipes, and about 10 bottles of some white liquid. The bottles were about 1.70 meters high and 70 cm in diameter. The bottles were sealed, and the caps read "achtung..." (attention) in German. The rest of the words were not visible, as all the bottles were covered with tarpaulins. The motors were about a meter high and covered with tarpaulins. The motors were unloaded on the smaller foundation, and the pipes and bottles were loaded onto the larger foundation. The next day, bricks began to be delivered to the site. About 600 Poles and about 350 Jews were working on the construction at the time. Once the foundations were built, all the Poles were sent to a labor camp, leaving the Jews to continue the construction. Before this, they lined up all the Jews who had worked with us before our eyes. About 80 of the weak and unfit for work were selected, taken to the forest, and all shot. At the same time, they shot six Poles who were building the right-hand foundation near the railway line. I don't know why they were shot. I don't know what was subsequently built on these foundations, as no Poles were allowed anywhere near the camp. On my last day in the construction camp, a truck covered with a tarpaulin arrived. No one was allowed near the truck, but it smelled of chlorine. This truck was parked in the camp, and in the morning it was taken to the foundations where the engines were, but in the meantime we were sent to a work camp, where I stayed for about seven days, then fell ill and was released from the camp.

The working conditions for the Poles building the camp were appalling. The work was extremely hard, and the food was very poor. They beat them horribly with whips and sticks. If a Pole fell ill, they were thrown to the ground behind the latrine, and no one dared approach them. That's where these sick people usually died, as they weren't given any food. On May 3, 1943, three carloads of Poles, about 120 people, were brought from somewhere. Everyone's hands were tied. They were all taken to the forest, brutally murdered, and thrown into pits. I saw their bodies myself. They were beaten with some kind of blunt instruments.

I can't show you anything else.

The report, based on my words, is written down correctly /signature/.

Interrogated by military investigator of the Guard, Senior Lieutenant of Justice /signature/

Interrogation of Bronia Teperman regarding the extermination of Jews at the Treblinka death camp in 1943, September 26, 1944.

On September 26, 1946, military investigator of the 65th Army's military prosecutor's office, Guards Senior Lieutenant of Justice Malov, in compliance with Articles 162-168 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RSFSR, interrogated as a witness:

Teperman, Bronia Berkovna, born in 1920, native of Warsaw, Jewish, housewife, 9th grade education, resident of Danzig. Warned of liability for giving false testimony under Article 95 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR /signature/.

On July 22, 1942, the Germans began rounding up Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto and sending them out of Warsaw in trains. Before departure, they announced that they were allowed to take 15 kg of luggage with them and that the Jews were being sent to the East, where they would work. I hid in Warsaw until January 20, 1943, and on January 20, 1943, during a roundup, I was captured, put in a freight car that was part of a train, and sent to the Treblinka camp, where I arrived on January 22, 1943. When they unloaded us from the cars at the camp, I saw many corpses of Jews killed and suffocated during the journey being carried out of our train.

Upon arrival at the camp, everyone was asked to quickly exit the train cars, with the women heading left toward the barracks and the men heading right. Everyone was then given rope laces to tie their shoes, which they were asked to remove. After their shoes were removed, the women were asked to strip naked. Then, in a special room, their hair was cut and they were sent in pairs down an alley lined with pine trees. The alley was covered with sand. Naked men followed along at the same time. There was terrible screaming and crying. Small children asked their parents, "Where are they taking us?" Meanwhile, the Germans and guards beat people with whips, sticks, and stabbed them with daggers. After I took off my shoes, as a seamstress, I, the only person in the train, was left behind and sent to work. While the men were being undressed, one Jew grabbed a grenade he had brought in his pocket and threw it at the Germans, killing two. After that, the shooting began, and many Jews were killed, while the rest were beaten and driven to the "bathhouse." All this happened in winter, when there was frost and snow. I remained in this camp, which the Germans called "Tot lager," or "death camp," until August 2, 1943, the time of the uprising.

Living conditions for the Jewish work crew were very harsh; they worked 12-hour shifts. They were fed soup made from unpeeled potatoes and a little bread. During the work, the Jews assigned to the work crew were beaten to death with whips and sticks and then shot. Anyone weakened was sent to the so-called "infirmary," where they were killed. I worked in the tailor's workshop until July 15, 1943, after which I was transferred to the section of the camp where people were killed in "baths" and corpses were burned. In this section, I worked in the kitchen of the barracks of the work crew, which was responsible for removing corpses from the baths and burning them. The work crew, selected from among the Jews for this purpose, consisted of 256 Jews. In total, I worked in this section of the camp until August 2, 1943. While working in this section of the camp, I witnessed how people were driven into bathhouses for suffocation and how the bodies of those strangled in the "bathhouses" were dragged out. Two brick buildings were used for suffocation, each containing a suffocation chamber. I was in a building with three chambers. The chambers had tiled floors. Half of the walls were also tiled. The ceiling was cement. Inside the chambers, pipes from the engine ran, carrying exhaust gas into the chambers. The engine was in a room next to the chambers. I once had the opportunity to examine this engine, and I clearly remember that it had the inscription "Citroen," a French manufacturer. Grooves were made in the floors of the chambers to allow blood to drain. If the engine malfunctioned, suffocation was carried out with chlorinated lime. I myself saw a can of chlorinated lime standing near the "bathhouses," and how buckets of chlorinated lime were hoisted onto the roofs of the "bathhouses." In these cases, the bodies of people removed from the cabins were blue. Three hundred to four hundred people were crammed into each cabin. I knew it was chlorinated lime because I used that same barrel to wash my laundry, so it would be white. The men who removed the bodies from the cabins said that after the people were suffocated with chlorinated lime, the smell of chlorine could be detected in the cabins. The bodies were cremated on special rigs consisting of rails placed on stones. Women's bodies were placed on the rails first, as they burned more readily. They were set on fire with pine wood, which was doused with flammable liquid to ensure the wood burned more efficiently. The bodies were burned day and night. The bodies of both newly strangled people and those previously exhumed from pits were burned. It was impossible to breathe; the stench of corpses filled the air and soaked people's clothes. I know that the Germans kept a tally of the people killed. During the burning of the corpses, one member of the work crew specifically counted how many bodies were brought from the "bathhouse" for cremation. This information was submitted to Arthur Mates, a German who was the head of the camp's extermination department. The commander of the entire "death camp" was Hauptsturmführer Otto Stangel. Before him, the camp commander was Dr. Ebert. Two weeks before the uprising, the Germans fired a salvo in the camp. The Germans themselves said that the salvo was fired in honor of the extermination of 3.5 million Jews.

Question: Under what circumstances did you manage to escape from the camp?

Answer: On August 2, 1943, a rebellion occurred in the camp, during which I, along with other prisoners, escaped from the camp.

I have nothing more to testify to.

The report was transcribed correctly from my words and was read to me /signature/.

Interrogated by Military Investigator of the Guard, Senior Lieutenant of Justice /signature/

The interrogation was conducted with the participation of Deputy Military Prosecutor of the 65th Guard Army, Major of Justice /signature/ [Mazor]

Sources

Mattogno, Carlo. The “Operation Reinhardt” Camps Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec: Black Propaganda, Archeological Research, Expected Material Evidence. 1st ed. Holocaust Handbooks 28. Academic Research Media Review Education Group Ltd, 2024. https://holocausthandbooks.com/book/the-operation-reinhardt-camps-treblinka-sobibor-belzec/.

Mattogno, Carlo, and Jürgen Graf. Treblinka: Extermination Camp or Transit Camp? 4th ed. Holocaust Handbooks 8. Academic Research Media Review Education Group Ltd, 2024. https://holocausthandbooks.com/book/treblinka/.

Mattogno, Carlo, Thomas Kues, and Jürgen Graf. The “Extermination Camps” of “Aktion Reinhardt”: An Analysis and Refutation of Factitious “Evidence,” Deceptions and Flawed Argumentation of the “Holocaust Controversies” Bloggers. 2nd, slightly corrected edition eds. Vol. 1. Castle Hill Publishers, 2015.

Mattogno, Carlo, Thomas Kues, and Jürgen Graf. The “Extermination Camps” of “Aktion Reinhardt”: An Analysis and Refutation of Factitious “Evidence,” Deceptions and Flawed Argumentation of the “Holocaust Controversies” Bloggers. 2nd, slightly corrected edition eds. Vol. 2. Castle Hill Publishers, 2015.

Pachaljuk, Konstantin Aleksandrovič, ed. Treblinka: Research, Memories, Documents. Naučnoe izdanie. Яуза, 2021. Originally published as Treblinka: Issledovanija, vospominanija, dokumenty. https://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/354229-treblinka-issledovaniya-vospominaniya-dokumenty

Archival References

State Archive of the Russian Federation

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 86-91

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 72-78

GARF 7445-2-134 p. 38

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 28-37

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 63-71

GARF 7445-2-134 p. 62

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 52-61

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 99-101

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 41-49

GARF P-7021-115-9 pp. 93-95

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 114-116

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 117-119

GARF 7445-2-134, p. 40

GARF 7445-2-134, p. 39

GARF 7445-2-134 p. 2

GARF P-7021-115-11 pp. 43-47

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 95-97

GARF P-7021-115-11 pp. 77-89b

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 102-105

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 120-121

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 106-113

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 50-51

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 92-94

GARF 7445-2-134 pp. 79-85

See also

• August 1944, 65th Army of the 1st Belorussian Front
• September/November 1944, SMERSH
• October/December 1944, Extaordinary State Commission (ChGK)