Treblinka Tour

Treblinka. Place of cremation.

In the camp there was an orchestra of Artur Gold.

He was the Jewish famous entertainment composer from the Warsaw ghetto, who before the war had own orchestra and recorded for Columbia Records and for the English studios. Dressed in colorful tails and big bow ties they played to Germans throughout the day.

As witness recalled:

"They played at noon, to Germans dinner, under the windows of canteen. They played after the appeal, after the beating. We sang "Goral, don't you regret?" to in the countryside, far away, in Wólka, peasants have heard that here is life.

Because the peasants then said:

How they singing there ! Germans shouted: Louder !".

From the other stories, worth of quoting is the story of a barber about beautiful Jewish girl Ruth Dorfman:

"It is interesting that I remembered her name, because in general I do not remember their names. I cut the hair of her, and she asked me how long lasts dying.

I told her - fifteen or twenty minutes.

They gassed with gases emitted from Russian tanks."

Treblinka. Rail tracks.

"You are free to take the gold and the money"

- this was written on German posters in the Warsaw ghetto.

"They meant more or less: do not forget to bring money and gold '"

- writes Rachel Auerbach.

Transports brought lawyers, bankers, doctors, landlords. They took with them the whole property.

After leaving the wagon they were greeted by following inscription:
"Warsaw Jews!

You are in the transit camp, from which you will be transferred to labor camps. To prevent epidemics, you have to give your clothes and stuff for immediate disinfection. Gold, money, foreign currency and jewelry should be deposited at the counter, where you will get a receipt.

They will be give back later on presentation of receipts. To be clean, all must take bath before continuing."

 

After an hour, murdered people burned on a big grate made by railroad rails.

Gravel.

At the end of the so-called "Black Road" was a penal labor camp.
Continuously resided there about 2,000 people, mostly Poles and Jews of Polish origin. Half of the 20,000 prisoners who passed through the labor camp - died of exhaustion or were killed.

Witness:

"Work in gravel oversaw the Ukrainians, who walked on slopes above the pit. For fun, sometimes they called a stared prisoner, a Jew, and they pushed him from the slop.

With this fall unfortunate person broke arms and legs. Work in the gravel pit was murderous. The middle of summer - the heat, no water to drink. People working in the gravel pit looked like skeletons, bones covered with skin."

Treblinka. Golden Harvest.

Photo of the local peasants from 1945.

They pose for a common photograph with a Polish soldiers who stopped them on predatory plunder of graves.

In the report from the raid a commander of the soldiers wrote:

"Digging people had golden rings and teeth crowns and porcelain teeth in gold and silver fittings."

At the foot of the sitting persons arranged skulls and tibias...

Historian Jan Tomasz Gross:

"...Europeans, which we see in the photo, most likely engaged in digging up ashed human remains in search of gold and valuables missed by the Nazi murderers. (...) The seemingly mild mood of this view concerns two central themes of the Holocaust - the mass murder of Jews and accompanying the crime of plunder of Jewish property... (...)"