Source gold teeth
The red squad had the task of
undressing the passengers and taking their clothes to the storage areas. The
Goldjuden--Jews
of gold--were
in charge of handling the money,
gold,
stocks, and jewelry. They subjected the prisoners to an intimate search just
before the gas chambers. Another,
the dentist, would open the mouths of the dead and pull out
gold teeth
with a pair of pliers. Then there
were the Totenjuden,
the Jews of death, who lived in
Treblinka
II.
2,000,000 gassed
Treblinka
On August 8, 1943,
The
New York Times
reported,
referring
to an article that appeared in a London newspaper: "2,000,000
Murders by Nazis Charged. Polish Paper in London says Jews Are Exterminated in
Treblinka Death House."
The subtitle reads: "According
to report, steam is used to kill men, women and children at a place in the
woods." The article was based upon a contribution published on August 7th
in the magazine Polish Labor Fights, which was nothing other than the
report of November 15, 1942. This is indubitably clear from the quotes in the
NYT article.[133]
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Barry the dog
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The dog was the size of a calf
so that, unlike smaller dogs, his shoulders reached to the buttocks
and abdomen of a man of average size. For this reason he frequently
bit his victims in the buttocks, in the abdomen and often, in the case of
male inmates, in the genitals, sometimes partially biting them off.
When the inmate was not very strong, the dog could knock him to the ground
and maul him beyond recognition. But when the defendant
Franz was not around,
Barry was a different dog.
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Ate women
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When we arrived in Treblinka and the Germans opened the
freight cars we beheld a horrible sight. The car was full of corpses. The
bodies were partly decomposed by chlorine. The stench in the cars made
those still alive choke. The Germans ordered everyone to get out; those
still able to do so were half dead. Waiting SS and Ukrainians beat us and
shot at us...
On the way to
the gas chambers Germans with dogs stood along the fence on both sides.
The dogs had been trained to attack people; they bit the men's genitals
and the women's breasts, ripping off pieces of flesh. The Germans
hit the people with whips and iron bars to spur them on so that they
pressed forward into the "showers" as quickly as possible. The screams of
the women could be heard far away, even in the other parts of the camp.
The Germans drove the running victims on with shouts of: "Faster, faster,
the water will get cold, others still have to go under the showers!" To
escape from the blows, the victims ran to the gas chambers as quickly as
they could, the stronger ones pushing the weaker aside. At the entrance to
the gas chambers stood the two Ukrainians, Ivan Demaniuk and Nikolai, one
of them armed with an iron bar, the other with a sword. They drove the
people inside with blows... As soon as the gas chambers were full, the
Ukrainians closed the doors and started the engine. Some 20-25 minutes
later an SS-man or a Ukrainian looked through a window in the door. When
they had ascertained that everyone had been asphyxiated, the Jewish
prisoners had to open the doors and remove the corpses. Since the chambers
were overcrowded and the victims held on to one another, they all stood
upright and were like one single block of flesh. (Yad Vashem Archives
0-3/2140)
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Gas and babies
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In front of the entrance to the
gas-chambers there were usually several Ukrainians standing by with dogs,
who cruelly drove the victims in, often wounding them with knives.
The victims were driven into the
gas-chambers with their hands up, so that as manymight be squeezed
in as possible, and small children were piled on top.
An
SS-man Hitreider specialized in killing infants,
seizing them by the legs and killing them with one blow on the head
against a fence ...
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Franz
Stangl
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When asked during his later trial how many
people could be murdered in one day, Franz Stangl, Commandant of Treblinka,
answered:
"Regarding the question of the optimum amount
of people gassed in one day, I can state: according to my estimation a
transport of thirty freight cars with 3,000 people was liquidated in three
hours. When the work lasted for about
fourteen hours, 12,000 to 15,000
people were annihilated. There were many days that the work lasted
from the early morning until the evening . . . I have done nothing to
anybody that was not my duty. My conscience is clear.' "
Source
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Women wake up
When the gassing was in progress, begun with a "Ivan, water!" by one of the
guards, the prisoners screamed and pounded on the walls. There was a little
peephole so the Germans could see if the prisoners were dead yet. While the men
were being gassed, the women were waiting naked in the funnel. They could hear
their fathers, husbands, and sons dying. They experienced the
"death panic", which caused them to
empty their bowels involuntarily, because of the fear of imminent death . The
ground in the funnel was covered with piles of excrement afterwards.
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Pregnant women were problems
When the doors were opened, "the disfigured, bitten prisoners, with
torn-off and ears lay on top of each other in the most varied posture."
The bodies were then carried to the furnace to be burned.
Sometimes, the people were not dead and began to revive in the fresh air,
especially pregnant women. They were shot by the guards and burned like
the others. Some 800-1000 bodies were burned at the same time. They
would burn for five hours. The incinerator was operated twenty-four hours
a day.
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