82nd anniversary of the revolt on August 2nd 1943
82 years ago to this day, on the 2nd of August 1943, the six hundred or so Sonderkommandos of the death camp Treblinka revolted. Sonderkommando is a German word that refers to prisoners forced to carry out Nazi atrocities in the death camps of the Holocaust. Around three dozen SS operated Treblinka assisted by some 200 Trawniki men (mostly Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Belorussians recruited by the SS). During the Treblinka revolt about 200 Sonderkommandos made it out of the perimeter fence, 67 are known to have survived Treblinka and tell the world of the crime that happened there.
In Treblinka the Nazi boast was that they could process 3000 people in 45 minutes from door to door. That is from the time the train carriage doors were opened, and the victims unloaded onto the platform with the fake ticket office and fake clock, to the time the gas chamber doors were opened and their dead bodies taken out to be buried in the pits or burnt on the pyres. One of Treblinka’s survivors, Richard Glazer, said that the largest number of people slaughtered in one day at Treblinka was 18,000. He published the story of his time in Treblinka under the title, Trap With A Green Fence, it is compelling reading.
The number of people slaughtered in Treblinka varies and is usaually underestimated at between 700,000 and 900,000. The first trainload of victims to be processed in Treblinka arrived on 23rd June 1942 with 6000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. The last train load was processed on 19 August 1943 with victims of the Bialystok ghetto. The Hölfe Telegram, discovered amongst declassified WWII archives of the Public Record Office in Kew, England, states the official record of victims processed in Treblinka during its first five months of operation up to the end of December 1942, at 713,555. The fourteen month total of victims at Treblinka was gathered by the station master Franciszek Zabecki who was connected with the Polish resistance. “I know,” Zabecki stated, “the others guess. There were no German papers on which to base these estimates except those I rescued and hid – and they are inconclusive. But I stood there in that station day after day and counted the figures chalked on each carriage. I have added them up over and over and over. The number of people killed in Treblinka was 1,200,000 and there is no doubt about it whatsoever.” Revision of Franciszek Ząbecki’s estimate by his son Piotr tallies the figure at 1,297,000. Perhaps Franciszeki’s lower total included an estimate of error.
In my opinion the Treblinka saga is the deepest, darkest, depth of evil that humanity has ever descended. The revolt is a narrow beam of light illuminating it. Guilt for the crime goes way beyond Nazi Germany. It is a consequence of discrimination and persecution of Jews by Christians for more than a millennium. Until the recent Israel-Gaza war, the Christian world showed remorse for the Holocaust knowing well the guilt of past generations. Now the world stands with frozen hearts while witnessing Israel perpetuate it’s own version of genocide against Palestine, a crime equally as disturbing and evil as that committed by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe.
Will we never learn?
Hedge
