The Reconstruction of Treblinka

The studies which have resulted in this report were begun several years ago. Having worked extensively as a professional in the use of aerial reconnaissance imagery, Alex Bay had long been interested in the questions concerning the Holocaust. Beginning in 1998, he began researching the available facts about the death camps. During this period, he came across the CIA study of Auschwitz by Brugioni, and upon reading this he decided that a thorough and modern analysis of all the death camps was called for. This was to include Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. He soon came to realize that, despite the limited aerial photographic coverage, the task entailed much more time than he had anticipated. In part this was due to the difficulty of reconstructing events and physical plant, now 60 years in the past, using just a very few frames of aerial photography, secondary published sources, verbal testaments by victims and perpetrators, and a few scattered snapshots taken within the camp grounds. He  spent many hours trying to verify just a single fact. Much effort was spent on obtaining high quality copies of the photographs. To do this, he used the latest professional digital camera. Due to the increasing complexity of the project and personal time pressures, he  had to concentrate my efforts. Treblinka became the sole object of my research. Treblinka was chosen because it was the first camp he began to study, and the most familiar when he had to restrict the study to one camp at a time.

Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard

From the earliest days of their movement, Holocaust deniers have largely centred their arguments on the Auschwitz death camp. Surveying the literature which makes up so-called Holocaust Revisionism,  the obsession with Auschwitz is undoubtedly one of its defining features. Since the early 1990s, with the advent of the modern world-wide web, Holocaust deniers have taken to the internet to try and argue their case. Until recently, the ensuing online debates between advocates of Holocaust denial and their critics have likewise focused on Auschwitz.


Our friends at the Holocaust Controversies Blog have written an article that focuses on the Operation Reinhard camps, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, and the attempts to deny the reality of the murder at those camps by Holocaust deniers, Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, and Thomas Kues. They dedicated this work to the memory of Harry W. Mazal OBE.


The work is entitled, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard: A Critique of the Falsehoods of, Mattogno, Graf, and Kues. 

Final Destination Treblinka

As part of the greater Nazi effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe, the Treblinka concentration camp was second only the the more famous Auschwitz-Birkenau in terms of deadliness. With thousands of cattle cars stocked to the gills with Polish Jews converging on it day after day for months on end, its facilities orchestrated the annihilation of at least 800,000 of them, and quite likely more. All this we know from what remains of eyewitness testimony and physical evidence despite Nazi efforts to destroy both, and most especially train schedules whose 'final destination' declarations take on a macabre connotation with the understanding of what really occurred at the end of the line.


Massive and systematic executions at the Treblinka camp fell under the aegis of Aktion Reinhard (alternatively Einsatz Reinhard and Aktion Reinhardt), a facet of the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (Endlösung der Judenfrage) devoted to physically exterminating the Jews of the Generalgouvernement of former Poland.


A article by Stephen Potyondi at the Holocaust History project demonstrates the evil purpose of the Treblinka death camp.


http://www.holocaust-history.org/operation-reinhard/final-destination-treblinka

January 2009

January 25, 2009. Added the essay August Hirt: Deadly Collector of the Victims of the Holocaust, by Anne S. Reamey

January 17, 2009. Verdicts in several key trials in Germany in the 1950s and 1960s that contain numerous references to the Final Solution. The documents are in German and are:

• The verdict in the "Auschwitz Trial" in Frankfurt am Main of August 19-20, 1965.
• The verdict in the Belzec Trial in Munich of January 21, 1965
• The verdict in the Sobibor Trial in Berlin of May 8, 1950
• The verdict in the Sobibor Trial in Frankfurt am Main of August 25, 1950
• The verdict in the Treblinka Trial in Düsseldorf of September 3, 1965
• The verdict in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Ulm of August 29, 1958
• The verdict in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Munich of July 21, 1961

January 10, 2009. Updated the Klarsfeld section on the Main Page

September 2006

September 17, 2006. Updated the Links page.

September 17, 2006. Added Uprising in Treblinka, the testimony of Treblinka survivor Samuel Rajzman. Thanks to Andrew Mathis for the transcription.

May 2006

May 22, 2006. Updated the question and answer essay on denial and deniers.
May 5, 2006. Added an extensive and fully annotated essay on the Treblinka death camp entitled Final Destination Treblinka. Thanks to Stephen Potyondi for the essay.
May 2, 2006. Added a quick hit question and answer essay addressing Holocaust deniers and denial.

January 2004

January 14, 2004. Added new section on the extermination camps of Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor.


January 3, 2004. Updated questions and answers.

June 2003

June 10, 2003. Added The Reconstruction of Treblinka , an aerial photographic reconstruction of the Treblinka Death Camp by Alex Bay.

February 1999

February 27, 1999. Added "Delousing Van": Euphemism for Murder. Also added Second Response to 'Samuel Crowell'.
February 18, 1999. Added Yale Edeiken's essay The Forensic Sins of Carlos Porter.
February 14, 1999. Added the essay Stroop on Treblinka. Added several documents/reproductions:

• "Special Vans...or Other Remedies" (letter regarding "special vans" for the Mauthausen concentration camp)
• "97,000 have been processed" (describes in great detail the murders committed with gassing vans).
• Die Einsatzfähigkeit der Blausäure-Durchgasung bei tiefen Temperaturen ("The Efficiency of Prussic Acid Fumigation at Low Temperatures.")

February 6, 1999. Added "Gassing Devices" (Nuremberg Document NO-365, letter from Wetzel to Lohse).