To that day, I had never heard of those “Guidelines”, so I decided to look them up. As it turns out, they are available online:
http://www.herinneringseducatie.be/Portals/portal01/docs/Londen/Holocaust_Ex_TeachHbook.pdf

The first question that needs to be asked is: Why are special guidelines needed to teach any topic? We are told that “The Holocaust” has been thoroughly researched, so, why not read up on it, collect the data provided and simply teach? Why are special guidelines needed to teach “The Holocaust”? Or: What other topic needs special teaching guidelines? I am not aware of any, and indeed, the authors of the “Guidelines” start out by asking:

“Why Teach about the Holocaust?”

Now, this is not exactly what I asked, but it is a start. It continues:

“The objective of teaching any subject is to engage the intellectual curiosity of students in order to inspire critical thought and personal growth. Therefore it is essential that educators consider questions of rationale whenever they approach any subject.”

No problem with that, except perhaps for the last sentence and the caveat about rationale, i.e., are not all questions asked by students, if they refer to the subject, rational? Or put differently: who decides what is a rational Holocaust question and what is not? Why the angst about this issue?

Next follows some enumerated articles. In No. 1 the teacher is informed:

“The Holocaust was a watershed event, not only for the 20th century but also in the entire history of humanity. It was an unprecedented attempt to murder a whole people and to extinguish its culture […]“

How can the attempt to “…murder a whole people” be called an event? Would that not qualify as being the greatest crime in history, or at least, as something that should be viewed as a crime? There are no mentions of criminal activities in Webster’s definition of “event”. But then, if it is deemed a crime, different standards would apply, and experts in the field of criminal investigations would have to be called in to investigate. And so far, this has not happened. We do not have even one verifiable report by a forensic expert. We do have reports of investigations by the Soviets and Poles, but the Polish legal expert and investigator Lukaszkiewicz forgot to mark the “graves” he allegedly found and the Soviets reported nonsense, all of which has since been discarded. Is that why “The Holocaust” is called “event”, allowing for amateurs to investigate? The fact is, no solid evidence exists of this alleged enormous crime – the systematic mass murder of Jews by gas and bullets – having been committed.

All seven articles listed under that heading are worth reading, but to comment on everyone of them would make this too long, so I we will focus on just one more, the last one, No. 7:

“The Holocaust has become a central theme in the culture of many countries. This is reflected in media representation and popular culture. Holocaust education can offer students historical knowledge and skills needed to understand and evaluate these cultural manifestations.”

No argument with the first two sentences. The last sentence, however, is problematic: Why the special effort to make students “understand”? Will what is taught not speak for itself?

Moving on in the “Guidelines”, teachers are not told to just teach “The Holocaust”, oh no, the next chapter starts out with:

“What to teach about the Holocaust?”

Selective teaching then, starting with:

“Under the cover of the Second World War, for the sake of their “new order,” the Nazis sought to destroy all the Jews of Europe. For the first time in history, industrial methods were used for the mass extermination of a whole people. Six million were murdered [later we meet the estimate "approximately six million"], including 1,500,000 children. This event is called the Holocaust.”

We now have the “Guidelines” definition of “The Holocaust”. What this definition suggests is that World War II was used as a cover to kill six million Jews, including 1.5 million children. Would “The Holocaust” have happened if WWII had not happened? This is something the authors fail to address, even though the wording begs the question. In any case, we are informed that six million Jews were murdered, or approximately six million. Are the teachers next informed as to how they will be able to substantiate the numbers, including the 1.5 million children, or how they were killed, and when and where? Are they referred to any of the books the libraries are filled with? No, first an anonymous author connected with Yad Vashem is quoted:

“Teaching about the Holocaust can and must be different in various contexts. In order to see the differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, comparisons should be carefully distinguished and similarities also should be articulated.”

Why must teaching about “The Holocaust” be different from teaching about other historical subjects? Surely any differences between this and any other genocide would become apparent, if they existed. And again, why not just teach the facts and refer the students to relevant books, etc., why do they have to be “guided” in regards to this subject? Do the facts not speak for themselves? Apparently not, or at least this is how the text comes across.

The next chapter is titled “How to teach the Holocaust” and lists 29 suggestions, here are just a few of them, starting at the top:

” – The Holocaust can be successfully taught to students; do not be afraid to approach this subject”.

What is there to be afraid of? If what is being taught is based on facts, then just stick to the facts. No. 4 and 5 reads:

“- Individualise the history by translating statistics into personal stories.
- Use witness testimony to make this history more ‘real’ to your students”.

Personal stories and witness testimony? What happened to teaching the facts? Here the authors are recommending that students should be conditioned, before the subject is addressed. Suggestion No. 12 finally gets us there, having softened up the audience:

“- Provide your students with access to primary sources”.

Good, but still, particulars as to what sources would have been helpful! The next suggestion reads:

“- Students should be alerted to the fact that the perpetrators produced much of the evidence of the Holocaust”.

This in itself is an admission that no solid, substantial, evidence exists – a declaration of bankruptcy. Why not refer the students to reports compiled by experts in the field of criminal investigation, or independent findings in support of perpetrator testimony (some of which in reality was given under duress)? Further down the teacher is advised:

“-Avoid legitimising the denial of the past”.

Denial of the past? How, yesterday did not exist? This in turn is followed by:

“- Be aware of the potential and also the limitations of all instructional materials, including the Internet”.

Why limitations and where exactly are those limitations apparent? “The Holocaust”, we are told, is the best researched historical subject – there should be no limitations. Could it be that they are referring to the complete absence of solid evidence, thus encouraging the teachers to resort to smoke and mirrors? Perish the thought!

The 29 suggestions are then explained individually, I will just concentrate on No. 25: “Avoid legitimising the denial of the past”. It starts out with:

“Holocaust denial is ideologically motivated. The deniers’ strategy is to sow seeds of doubt through deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of the historical evidence. Teachers should be careful not to unwittingly legitimise the deniers through engaging in a false debate.”

Quite the decree! What it says is that Holocaust denial must be delegitimised, perhaps even outlawed, because it is ideologically motivated. Then we get this well-known mantra of “deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of the historical evidence”. First of all, revisionists do not deny anything, they ask questions. And if in fact they are distorting evidence, why not invite them to one of the many conferences to set the record straight? “Denial” would disappear in a flash if those who distort and misrepresent were to be presented, in public, with the undistorted facts claimed to exist. In May 2008, 200 scientists attended a conference in Berlin with the topic: “Die Gaskammer-Lüge in der Internationalen revisionistischen Propaganda” (“The gas chamber lie in revisionist propaganda”, cf. http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/termine/id=9241). However, not one Revisionist had been invited to present some of that “revisionist propaganda”. Why not? Here was a chance to invite the press and totally destroy the revisionist arguments, with 200 scientists participating in the wrecking job. Why was this not done, to end denial?

Teachers are then told what to do if “denier” arguments are presented:

“However, many teachers feel that the phenomenon of Holocaust denial must be explored with their students, either because their young people raise the question themselves or because teachers are concerned that their students might come across these views later in life and be unprepared for the deniers’ rhetorical techniques, and their ability to confuse or mislead. If this is the case then Holocaust denial should be treated separately from the history of the Holocaust. It might be relevant to a separate unit on how forms of antisemitism have evolved over time, or as a media studies project exploring the manipulation, misrepresentation and distortion employed by groups for political, social or economic ends.”

Is not to label people who ask questions “Antisemites” a sign of ideological motivation? It is, and nothing else needs to be added to the above. Those “Guidelines” are clear evidence that “The Holocaust” can not be substantiated, and that students must be conditioned to accept it.

In conclusion, I here is part of the speech given by Lady Renouf:

“This conference is entitled “Denial and Democracy”. There is surely only one way to combat “denial” in a “democratic” context – by not instituting debate-denial across Europe but instead by providing documentary evidence to disprove the deniers’ case. Two weeks ago Benjamin Netanyahu based his address to the United Nations on evidence – so-called industrial WMD construction blueprints – which had been rejected as spurious by Jewish experts such as Prof. Van Pelt, who went so far as to say “the deniers are having great fun because it shows how people are gullible”. These same documents held up as proofs by Netanyahu were in fact first discovered and published in 1976 (as proof of the normality of gas chambers [*] thus labelled for disinfecting clothing) by the veteran revisionist Professor Robert Faurisson!

Can this expert conference succeed where Netanyahu failed? Can this conference send us away with one – just one – clear item of documentary proof which confounds source-critical Holocaust revisionists? Or must we merely silence such sceptical voices with threats, fines and prison sentences and teach our school children debate-denial of normal historical source criticism? […]“

The defense at the 2006-2007 Zündel trial in Germany also asked for proof of the “Holocaust” allegations. None was provided, and Zündel’s defense lawyers were threatened with charges of Holocaust denial when they persisted in their demand for such. Such behavior is not exactly convincing and the “Guidelines” are further evidence that what is presented as fact can not be substantiated.

Wilfried Heink

Chapter 10 deals with a pact between Churchill and Stalin, the French are also part of the plan. I was able to obtain a German translation of this chapter and translated it into English. I would like to thank Veronica Clark for her assistance.

Some of what Hautamäki writes I do not agree with, but my opinion is not the issue here. Hopefully the German edition will be available soon, allowing for a more contextual approach. The second volume should also help, but until that happens, here then Chapter 10.

10. Churchill and Stalin’s war operation agreements of October 15, 1939 in Moscow.

“Stalins double cover”

Translated by Wilfried Heink

Edited by Veronica Clark

The Great Powers, which had for years conducted clandestine politics, were about to make their last move on the chessboard of political agreements. Now soldiers and armies were entered onto the stage in decisive fashion. The “iron roller” of war could no longer be stopped by any reason.

In the minds of the leaders of the Western Powers, Hitler was unstoppable when it came to the Polish issue. He had tried to avoid a war on two fronts by signing an agreement with Stalin, but the pact was violated when Poland was attacked. Thus, Hitler became a sort of “Siamese twin” of Stalin’s. In the ensuing situation Hitler had to act in a way that respected Stalin’s interests as to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. However, Stalin’s real intentions were discussed more and more in German circles. But the promise of Russian supplies of raw materials to Germany forced Hitler to be patient. To avoid the catastrophe of a two-front war, Hitler planned to attack the west first, since his peace proposals of 1939 had been rejected. According to his own account, he delayed action because of the rainy fall weather. It was a matter of survival for Stalin, the “Siamese twin”, to keep Hitler content and to fulfill his obligations arising out of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact without interruption. The Red Army was not yet strong enough to withstand a Wehrmacht onslaught. For Stalin this was indeed a nightmare.

Similarly, England, France and the USA, which entered the war later on, were not yet ready for war; they had all three only began to allocate the necessary resources needed to wage a war, thus actions against Germany were out of the question. Stalin, the dictator, was aware of the shortcomings of democracies. If Hitler could concentrate his military might early on against the Soviet Union—i.e., before the Western Powers were able to organize and force Hitler to station troops in the West instead—this would be a deadly danger for Stalin.

Stalin was above all a realist! Assessments undertaken by the Kremlin concerning material resources indicated that fortunes would favor the Western allies—England, France and the USA—if the war could be expanded enough to last a long time. Stalin decided to smash this Gordian knot that had turned into a matter of life or death for the Soviet Union (see Stalin’s speech of August 19, 1939), and to enter into the most secret agreement of WWII with the Western Powers. The military [Red Army?] had already, in the late summer of 1939, worked on joint operations in case of a German attack.

According to the plans worked out after August 23, the aim was to create new fronts to disperse and tie down German troops. Later, a concentrated attack from different directions against Germany was planned: after all the resources that were needed had been assembled. In light of Churchill’s extremely close contact earlier (after September 3, channeled into Chamberlain’s cabinet) Stalin was now willing to sign an agreement with the Western Powers. Disinformation was needed to keep this a secret.

Mannerheim was informed.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is seen as the most important agreement of WWII. For Hitler this pact was vital, and he was gullible enough to take the signatures of Molotov and Stalin at face value, forgetting what Lenin had said about the importance of “papers”. But according to the information in Document S-32, the most important agreement of WWII was signed in Moscow on October 15, 1939—between the Soviet Union, England and France.

Reflection

Mannerheim kept the content of that agreement secret in his S-32 document, copies of which have become known. Fifty-plus years later we find it prudent to make this agreement public, so as to gain an understanding of the truth of the most difficult time in the history of Finland.

Given the unique situation Finland was in following the war, the Marshall was not able to write about the political background of issues in his memoirs, and concentrated instead on military operations. We have depositions by the Marshall made to his agent VT on January 20, 1950 in which he stated:

“My military dos and don’ts are not the issue in this record (Doc. S-32), nor are my memories of them. I will leave this up to others. I cannot make these political background actions known to my generals, because that information would not be treated correctly and honestly by them”. The operational plans for this war were apparently signed by the minister of the Admiralty, Churchill, on February 8, 1940 in London. He handed them, in any case, to Stalin’s courier on February 9, to be forwarded by air mail to Moscow. German intelligence knew about this and intercepted the plane carrying the documents over the Baltic Sea. The plane was searched, the documents found, copied and the plane allowed, after a delay of 4 hours (Groesmann), to continue on as if nothing had happened. A detailed account of this will be provided in chapter 12.

On March 9, 1940, Mannerheim received, from Ribbentrop per courier, copies of portions of those plans, as they concerned Finland and Scandinavia, including maps and statements about the allied operations planned in Europe. Translated copies of those documents will be added below. The courier also handed a personal letter from Ribbentrop to Mannerheim in which he outlined the expected actions taken by Germany (more about this in chapter 12).

Declaration of intent of Churchill and Stalin (February 8, 1940, translated from Finish to Swedish).

The Admiralty is hereby making a declaration of readiness regarding the reached agreements on October 15, 1939 for waging war, signed and delivered by Mr. Stalin on January 28, 1940, the agreement to read as follows:

1. As soon as the Soviet Union publicizes its occupation of Finland in its entirety, including its bays, coastline and islands, the maritime ministry is prepared to send marines and other forces no later than the night of May 14-15, 1940 to occupy important objects in Norway. In addition, England will occupy Denmark. In cooperation with French troops, England will occupy Swedish Göteborg as well as southern Sweden. At the same time British naval forces will control the North Sea and block access to it from the Baltic Sea for German ships and submarines.

2. Agreement was reached during negotiations between France and England concerning Finland’s ‘often asked for’ assistance in its fight against the Soviet Union, which our governments had promised. This promised assistance, which Finland had asked for, will be redirected to Sweden and Norway where it will be placed on hold, even if those countries proved willing to allow the transit of troops. France promised 50,000 to 100,000 troops, to be stationed in Sweden to tie up the Swedish forces, to allow the Soviet Union to occupy Finland and intern its forces. English forces will be stationed in Norway, about 5,000 to 8,000 troops will land in Göteborg, Sweden.

3. Following the occupation of Finland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden, agreement can be reached between English and Soviet forces as to the distribution of troops and their targets, as well as the timing of the attack against Germany; that according to already established plans, so that:

Troops of the English and French expedition force will jointly initiate an attack along the Cherbourg-Rotterdam line with the Siegfried-Line as their target, while at the same time Poland and Czechoslovakia are attacked by Soviet forces.

The defense forces of Holland and Belgium have agreed to join British/French troops.

French and English naval forces will close the North Sea, as well as the English Channel, to any naval traffic of German ships until Germany’s forces are defeated and Germany is forced into a peace agreement.

4. For the main attack from the Baltics and the Scandinavian Peninsula, the plan for the supply of the troops will be worked out in a joint effort in Paris, at the time of your choosing, according to your suggestions.

5. The joint committee of the French-English air force agreed to immediately invite a representative of the Soviet air force for the purpose of cooperation in an effort to once and for all eliminate the German air force, even before an attack by sea and land begins [emphasis added].

6. The assurance of assistance of military support to Finland, mentioned in Art. 2, is based on the Crimea negotiations between the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and England’s Winston Churchill, to obtain a troop transit agreement from Sweden, Norway and Denmark to help Finland militarily. If those Nordic countries agree to this transit of troops, English and French troops can be moved onto the Scandinavian Peninsula without encountering any resistance. The occupation of the Scandinavian Peninsula, and the interment of its forces, could thus be achieved by making it appear as a bloodless coup. The Soviet Union would thus be relieved of concern about the English/French troops posing a danger to it. The occupation of the Scandinavian Peninsula will take place even if said transit agreement for the support troops is not granted. The Soviet Union will be invited to send a military expert to observe operations for occupying Scandinavia, as well as the preparations of those operations. It would be beneficial if this expert could arrive as soon as possible.

7. As to the request to set up mine fields along the coast of Norway by the Soviet Union, a map five (5) is attached showing the mine field as agreed to. English naval forces will expand this mine field and extend it starting April 5-6, according to attachment six (6). The unmined areas will be shown in attachment 6.

Attachments 5 and 6 were not found when this document was copied on January 19 and 21, 1950 (author’s note).

Significance and implications of this agreement

With this agreement Churchill and the Western Powers allowed the Soviet Union to bring all of the small adjoining countries under its control. This went far beyond what was agreed to under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact concerning “regions of interest”. At the same time Churchill granted himself the right to interfere with the sovereignty of many neutral countries (Island, Faeroe Islands, Norway, Sweden, Greece, etc.).

The only concession Stalin was asked to make in the supplementary agreement concerned the situation of the small states following the war. According to that agreement those small states were to be given their freedom and sovereignty (Groesmann).

The date for the Moscow agreement was set for October 15, 1939 (Groesmann). An interesting detail was why this agreement was signed just then. In 1972 an elderly railway official in Lwow (formerly Lemberg) divulged that the railway station, including the surrounding areas, was cordoned off—because an important visitor was expected. Additional research has revealed that this had to have been around the time of October 16. Edvard Radztnsky, a Russian researcher who checked this, has evidence that Stalin was not at the Kremlin from October 18 to the 19; nobody knew where he was.

A letter of July 19, 1940, found in the Washington National Archives, brought this matter to the fore. The letter, from FBI-Chief J. Edgar Hoover, was addressed to Adolf A. Berte Jr.—a secretary in the US foreign office. The letter states that Hoover had information that Hitler and Stalin had met on October 17, according to a certain source! Because this could not have been so, the question was asked: “Who did Stalin meet at that time? Who sent this uninformative news to Hoover?”

At the same time, Britain’s “ready leader” waged a campaign without equal with the aim to establish a Tri-Part agreement to defeat Germany. Given the Swedish-based ore transports to Germany by ship, Scandinavia—though mostly Norway—was allotted the most important role regarding Churchill’s ongoing war plans in the North—since November/December 1939. Those plans included the so-called “Baltic Sea Operation”. The clandestine operations aimed at Scandinavia, which began on October 15, 1939, provided for (the Moscow Agreement): those operations far exceeded what was necessary to interrupt the ore transports from Narvik (“Front N”).

Among the documents found and copied by the Germans—the ones confiscated from the Soviet courier plane on February 9, 1940—was a map of those operations, with an explanation for the realization of those plans, approved by the British Admiralty (Churchill).

“The penal labor camp of Treblinka I was established in the fall of 1941. It was located two kilometers away from the extermination camp, Treblinka II, which was opened on July 22, 1942. Initially, most of the prisoners in the labor camp were Poles from the Warsaw area. Later, Jews from the same area joined them. The average number of the prisoners ranged from as few as 100 to as many as 2,000. Approximately 20,000 people passed through the Treblinka I penal labor camp; it is believed that nearly half of them were murdered during the camp’s three-year existence. The camp was dismantled in July 1944, as the Red Army approached the area.” (pp. 31-32, note 8).

No source is given for this information. We should note here initially that, accepting the presented figures, half of the detainees were released either during the operation of the camp or at its liquidation.

The Treblinka experience of Israel Cymlich

Israel Cymlich was arrested for black market activity in the small town Falenica (some miles east of Warsaw) and sent to Treblinka on August 20, 1942 (p. 29). Cymlich writes that by “the second half of July” that year, the Jews in Warsaw still “had absolutely no clue as to what was going on, or about the destination of the transports. The Germans proved to be very cunning, by proclaiming that the deportees were leaving to work in the East” (p. 25). On the other hand, certain rumors were already circulating: “foreman Ickiewicz, on a visit to our apartment, told me that all the transports departed for Treblinka, where Jews were let out to some electrical fields and the burned” (p. 26). E. Ringelblum mentioned electricity as a murder method at Treblinka on October 15, 1942, and the same method was mentioned also in the Nuremberg document USSR-93 (Graf & Mattogno, Treblinka. Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?, pp. 50-51, 61-62). Killing by electricity was generally attributed to Belzec during the war years.
When Cymlich’s transport reached the Treblinka station, it was divided. One part was sent to Treblinka II, while the other part, carrying our witness, continued on along the railway spur to Treblinka I. On the way, however, Cymlich caught a glimpse of the “extermination camp”:

“And there we were, passing through the Treblinka railroad station, through the woods, until, all of a sudden, we beheld a sight straight out of Dante’s Inferno. At first, I wasn’t sure whether it was real or a mirage: a huge mountain of clothes, naked people running all around it, throwing more clothes higher and higher, black smoke billowing from huge pits. (…) We barely had the time to make out a number of barracks, machine-guns mounted on the roofs, firing frequently. Then we saw only a fence of young pine trees, and smelled the terrible odor of burning human bodies.” (p. 31)

No other eyewitness claims that bodies were burned at Treblinka II as early as August 1942. Abraham Kszepicki, who was deported to Treblinka II on August 25 and managed to escape 18 days later, speaks of mass burials but mention nothing of cremations (cf. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka… p. 85). The witness Glazar claims that the burning of bodies began in November (R. Glazar, Trap with a green fence, p. 29), whereas Chil Rajchman dates the same event to December (C. Rajchman, Ich bin der letzte Jude, p. 113). Historians generally claim that cremations began in March 1943 (cf. Arad, p. 173).
The Treblinka I labor camp is, needless to say, portrayed by Cymlich as a living hell, with SS guards such as Untersturmführer Prefi, “a madman and a thug” who “carried out massacres single-handedly” with his machine-gun, and Unterscharführer Schwarz, who “derived sadistic satisfaction from tormenting, torturing and killing” inmates in the Malkinia subcamp with blunt instruments, with a daily quote of at least a dozen killed (pp. 34-35). On the other hand our witness survived a 3-week bout of typhus in a quarantine barrack together with “many other patients”, even if “every few days, patients would be taken from the barracks to the woods or to the death camp” (pp. 40-42).
At the time of Cymlich’s arrival, 400 Jews and about 200 Poles were held in the camp; by November 1942 there were 1,200 Jewish and some 100 Polish detainees (p. 36). The Poles stayed in the camp two or three months, and most of them had a term of release. Some Poles “could leave the camp grounds” and some were brought parcels from their families. “Meeting with Poles and talking to them were not allowed; to this end, the latrine was the meeting place of choice” (p. 37). According to Cymlich, groups of Jews from the extermination camp were regularly sent to Treblinka I to replenish its labor force (p. 40). Among the detainees in the labor camp was also a group of German and Czech Jews who had participated in the construction of Treblinka II:

“They had worked for a long time at constructing the other camp, without a clue as to what they were building. The contingent that used to go to work there was called the ‘T-Group,’ pronounced Tej. The prisoners explained the meaning of ‘T’ by suggesting it meant Treblinka or technical group. They didn’t know that the name T-Group was for the death camp under construction: the so-called T-Halle, or, to be more exact, Tothalle.” (p. 32).

How Cymlich knew about this bizarre name, which does not appear in any other witness testimony, is never made clear. Jan Sulkowski, a Polish prisoner from the labor camp who had taken part in the construction of the “death camp” testified in 1948:

“I was told by the SS-men that we were building a bath-house and it was after a considerable time that I realized that we were constructing gas-chambers” (Arad, p. 40).

Cymlich came to learn the following about the killing installations from other labor camp inmates:

“All we knew was that corpses were completely burned; nothing specific, however, was known about the methods of mass killing. People said that the newly arrived victims were told to undress under the pretext of [that they were] going to take a bath, which actually was a barracks (sic) with an electrified floor. Some claimed that this barracks was in fact a gas chamber. After the killing, the floor slid out and the corpses were thrown into pits, which doubled as furnaces” (pp. 38-39).

This description has caused Silberklang to insert an explanatory note:
“It is noteworthy that even when he was in the camp and was able to acquire much information about the death camp, Israel Cymlich and others had mistaken notions about the method of murder. Only ‘some’ believed that the Jews were being killed in a gas chamber. And, of course, there was no sliding floor in these chambers” (p. 39, note 17).
But if there were inmates in the labor camp who themselves had participated in the construction of the “gas chambers,” how come that such ridiculous notions, completely contradicting the established “truth”, were spread among them?
Moreover, if the Germans really were constructing installations for mass murder and wanted to keep those a secret, why would they involve Polish labor camp inmates, who according to Cymlich usually were released after two or three months (p. 37), or for that matter Jews from Treblinka I, who possibly could have passed on their knowledge to Polish detainees? One may recall in this context that the alleged first gas chambers at Belzec were constructed by a team of 20 local Poles (cf. Mattogno, Belzec…, p. 43).
It is further noteworthy that the tale of the electrical floor which, once the killing was done, opened to a furnace pit, is strongly reminiscent of propaganda spread about Belzec (Mattogno, Belzec…, pp. 11-22). The collapsible gas chamber floor also appears in the testimonies of several Sobibor witnesses (cf. M. Novitch, Sobibor. Martyrdom and Revolt, p. 147, Ehrenburg & Grossman, The Black Book, p. 439; Yuri Suhl (ed.), They fought back…, p. 20). There is even an indication that the collapsible floor tale was once applied to Auschwitz (C. Edvardson, Bränt barn söker sig till elden, Stockholm 1984, p. 57).
Later during his stay in the labor camp Cymlich also got into contact with inmates from the death camp, who supposedly told him further details about the killings. A young Jew told him “that there was a large barrack, partitioned into several chambers, to which pumps were hooked that sucked the air out. After the victims were locked inside, the pumps started working and the victims suffocated. Whoever survived for several minutes was finished off with a bullet” (p. 45). Again Silberklang adds an explanatory note: “At Treblinka, of course, the gas was pumped in, and [it was] not the air that was pumped out. After the gassing was completed, the gas chamber was ventilated. Apparently Cymlich’s contact misunderstood the purpose of the engines that stood outside the gas chamber. Moreover, the effect of the gas entering the room may have been as though the air had been pumped out” (p. 45, note 18). I will return to the issue of the “vacuum chambers” later in this review.
Israel Cymlich escaped from the labor camp in April 1943, just before he was to be transferred to the “death camp.” He returned to Falenica, where he supposedly finished writing his memoirs on June 10 the same year. Treblinka II was liquidated three months later, yet Cymlich is able to deliver a “correct” prophecy about the end of the alleged death camp:

“Before war’s end, undoubtedly everything would be leveled, plowed over, trees would be planted over the graves of the hundreds of thousands of people incinerated there. Only the resident of the neighboring villages would be able to point out the empty area of the greatest execution site in the history of the world.” (p. 46)

Cymlich, who admits that he has “described Treblinka very briefly and not very accurately” (p. 52), concludes that “the blame belonged to the entire German people, who not only knew about the crime, but willingly helped to carry it out. The pleasure of tormenting the innocent was in the blood of every German” (p. 45). His personal judgment of an entire people is more than a little harsh: “This organized crime, which had been planned down to the last detail, must be avenged in blood. The German people must be taught a ‘lesson’ that would burn out its thuggish nature for centuries to come.” (p. 62)
After the war Cymlich moved to Uruguay, where he was still alive in 2005.

Oskar Strawczynski’s ten months in Treblinka

Oskar Strawczynski was born in Lodz in 1906. On October 5, 1942, he was sent to Treblinka together with his family from the Czestochowa ghetto. On August 2, 1943 he participated in the uprising and mass escape from the alleged death camp together with his brother Zygmunt. After the war he moved to Canada. In 1964 he testified at the Düsseldorf Treblinka trial. Strawczynski died in Montreal in 1966.
Regarding the origin of the published account, members of the Strawczynski family informs us that it was written in Yiddish “during the spring and summer of 1944,” when the witness joined a unit of Jewish partisans from the ZOB (Jewish Combat Organization). The head of the unit, a certain Gabrysz Fryszdorf, “wanted to ensure that an eyewitness account of the events at Treblinka was preserved for history” and provided our witness with paper. The original manuscript was supposedly lost, but a copy made by Fryszdorf’s wife was deposited in the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York (pp. 188-189). When exactly this happened is not made clear, but Strawczynski’s sister reportedly translated the YIVO copy into English in 1981. We are further informed that Strawczynski after the end of the war presented either the original manuscript or another copy of it to the Jewish community organization in Lodz, which refused to publish it “because of the frankness with which the Jews collaboration in Treblinka was depicted” (p. 124).
Besides the fact that, similar to Cymlich, the beginning of cremations at the camp is dated much earlier than by the official version (our witness speaks on p. 130 of feeling the “smell of charred flesh” as he arrives in early October), and the claim that the Treblinka victims numbered in the “millions” (p. 131), the most remarkable aspect of his tale is indeed his portrayal of the relation between camp staff and detainees. One should recall here that Treblinka allegedly was a “pure extermination camp” where the few who were selected for work in the camp could be sure that they, too, sooner or later would be killed. The staff in turn consisted of trained killers who allegedly tortured and murdered inmates for the slightest transgression of camp rules, besides carrying out a mass murder of thousands of Jewish deportees on a daily basis. Nonetheless our witness wants us to believe that fraternizing went on between the SS and the detainees, like some “Stockholm syndrome” in extremis, and that inmates even took initiatives to “deceive” arriving Jews that they had come to a transit camp. On pp. 140-141 we are told of a transport of “bold and militant” Jews from Bialystok or Grodno, who at their arrival to the camp in December 1942 asked the Jewish work commando (the “Reds”) at the reception square:

“’’You are Jews like us. Is this Treblinka? Are we going to our death? We are ready. We will free us all.’ Instead of telling them the truth, the ‘Reds’ told them that this was just a transit camp, that tomorrow they would be transported to other camps for labor. With great difficulty, the ‘Reds’ convinced them to undress.”

It is worthy of note that Israeli historian Yitzhak Arad has consciously distorted this passage from Strawczynski’s account. In his summary of it (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka…, p. 254) Arad writes:

“When the people from the transport disembarked, they had no idea where they were. They asked the Jewish prisoners if they were in Treblinka, but their questions were left unanswered.”

Yet according to Strawczynski, the prisoners had told the deportees that they were in a transit camp!

Needless to say, the ‘Reds’ are portrayed as scum from the Warsaw underworld, and their kapo Jurek as someone who raped young girls bound for the gas chambers (p. 140). On a side note, we are informed in this chapter that some Jews from Czestochowa had been issued special papers exempting them from resettlement by the ghetto commandant Degenhart (pp. 142-143).
The female detainees are, with only five exceptions, described as tramps who “went to parties, got drunk, and enjoyed themselves to the utmost”. Supposedly, they slept around with Jewish kapos as well as Ukrainian guards and SS, and never received physical punishments (p. 154).
The members of the Jewish “aristocracy” in Treblinka were so well seen to that, in case of illness, they were not taken to the “Lazarett” to be shot, but instead, if they died, “a funeral was arranged according to Jewish tradition” (p. 162).
The security at the camp is described as being so lax that, up until at least November 1942, “about 30-40 people escaped daily” (pp. 145-146)! In the end, however, the SS grew anxious “that the secret of the ‘resettled’ Jews” would become known to the outside world. (p. 146). We are told that the Germans “been spreading rumors that the ‘resettled’ Jews were being sent to the Ukraine for farm work” and that there even was “a sign in Treblinka to this effect”. The SS even bothered to send “an ‘important personage’ from the central office in Lublin” (perhaps Hermann Höfle?) to Treblinka just to hold a speech to the detainees about the supposedly fake resettlement (pp. 146-147).
In the spring of 1943, at the same time as hundreds of thousands of rotting corpses were allegedly turned into ashes in the death camp proper (also known as Camp 2), the SS set out to “beautify” the camp and introduce entertainment and pastimes for themselves as well as the inmates. Responsible for most of this was SS Kurt “Lalka” Franz, who is generally described by eyewitnesses as the worst sadist in the camp. Franz saw to that a boxing ring was set up:

“A boxing craze spread through Treblinka. In the free evening hours, you could spot groups of people surrounding two fools sporting swollen noses and black eyes” (p. 156)

Also, “a show would be held almost every second Saturday: concerts, boxing, athletic competitions” (p. 156). Responsible for the music was usually the Arthur Gold jazz orchestra, for which “Lalka” had special costumes made (white jackets with blue collars and lapels). The orchestra performed behind elegant, custom-made music stands. “You could not ask for anything better in the finest resort” (pp. 155-156). Israel Cymlich also mentions this orchestra:

“The Jews set out for work in the morning singing, and they sang upon return. Especially in the evenings, after the end of the working day, the Jews marched as if on parade, singing to the sounds of an excellent jazz orchestra, and sometimes to the sounds of a violin or an accordion. One could only imagine what a passing stranger might have thought when hearing the song of a thousand sated, and also usually slightly drunk, workers.” (p. 46)

The Germans liked the Jewish jazz musician so much that they threw a big party to celebrate this 40th birthday:

“The Treblinka bakery supplied pastries; the German warehouse supplied drinks and sweets. Gold arranged a special program for the occasion. The hall was beautifully decorated and the orchestra was in gala attire. Special invitations were issued to all the Germans and the Jewish camp aristocracy. Toasts were drunk to the German victory. Gold reached his peak with his oration in which he praised the Germans for their benevolence, and declared that their handling of the Jews was understandable and in the interests of the German people. I have no idea what the Germans could have thought of that speech” (p. 157).

No wonder that the Jewish organization in Lodz refused to publish this account!
During the period of beautification several new camp “streets” and buildings were constructed:
“New streets and avenues are paved with stone and given various names, e.g., Kurt Seidl Strasse, named after the chief of the ‘street-builders’ brigade; and Siedlerstrasse [Settlers' Street!], leading toward Camp 2″ (p. 165).
Between the two German barracks a small brick building containing a bathhouse for the Germans “with a tower for the waterworks” was set up, together with an armory and the well-known Treblinka “Zoo” (p. 166, 174). Strawczynski further claims that the following odd contraption was installed in the camp’s administrative office:

“Berl Kot also constructed a special iron cupboard. Inside it were some metal shelves like a grating. On a special shelf, there was a little bottle of gasoline and some matches, and underneath was a large glass bottle containing several liters of gasoline. Over it hung a weight tied to a rope, which was fastened outside the cupboard. (…) The secret documents of Treblinka were kept on the remaining shelves. A pipe from the cupboard went through the roof as though from a stove. It served the following purpose: In case of a sudden, unexpected attack, all those inconvenient documents could be burned instantly and completely. In such an event, the contents of the small bottle would be spilled and ignited; the doors of the cupboard hermetically sealed; and the rope loosened, causing the weight to fall and break the large bottle. The gasoline would then catch fire and the documents would be burned.” (pp. 166-167)

This sure sounds like a risky security measure!
According to Strawczynski, the detainees in Camp 1 “were strictly forbidden to enter Camp 2″ (p. 170). Our witness, however, received descriptions of the “Totenlager” from two Jews who had worked there, Herszel Jablkowski, who had been “employed in building the ‘bath’”, and Szymon Goldberg, “who worked in Camp 2 for four months” and who met with Strawczynski in the Polish forests 10 months after the mass escape, at the time the account was reportedly written (p. 171). The description of the gas chambers presented by Strawczynski reads as follows:

“It was a large, concrete building standing on a cement platform. On its roof, visible from a distance, was a wooden Star of David. Running through the middle of the building was a corridor. The entrance was covered with a red curtain. Off the corridor were doors leading to small cubicles into which the arrivals from the transport were introduced. Outside, over the platform were large openings covered by panels hinged at the top and fastened with steel bands. Inside the cubicles, smooth tiles covered the slightly slanted floors and halfway up the walls. On the ceiling were mounted a few shower-heads There was also a small window in the middle of the ceiling [of each cubicle]. The doors are hermetically sealed, and the motors start to work. The air from inside is sucked out, and fumes from burnt gasoline is forced in. The cries from inside can be heard for about 10 minutes and then it becomes silent. The entire process, from the arrival at the camp to the oven, lasts only about half an hour. A German controls the progress of the ‘work’ through the little windows in the ceiling. When he is sure that everyone inside is dead, he opens the side panels, and the corpses fall out onto the cement platform. And elderly Jew from Czestochowa, known as ‘the dentist,’ checks the bodies for gold or metal teeth, which he pulls out. The bodies are then piled onto stretchers and carried to the oven, where they are flung into the fire and burned. The blood that has collected in the cubicles streams out into specially dug ditches. The ‘bath’ contained 10 cubicles, four big ones and six smaller ones” (pp. 169-170)

The notion that the air was sucked out of the hermetically sealed chambers by pumps before the exhaust gas was led in does not make much sense. For one thing, the feasibility of the process is dubious, due to the issue of pressure. Moreover, if the air could really be sucked out of the chambers, why bother introducing the exhaust gas, since deprived of oxygen the victims would have suffocated in no time? Apparently aware of this oddity, Silberklang remarks (p. 170, note 19) that “the effect of pumping the poison exhaust into the gas chambers was to replace the air there”, suggesting that like Cymlich’s Treblinka II contact, Strawczynski’s informant had “misunderstood the purpose of the engines” and mistaken the supposed ventilation following the gassing with the sucking out of the air prior to the introduction of the poisonous fumes. How credible is this explanation? At the end of 1945, Strawczynski’s informant Szymon Goldberg testified:

“The Jews were poisoned in that the air was pumped out – there was a machine for pumping out the air – and gas of a vehicle were introduced. Ether was burned and this vapor introduced inside. Then there was also chlorine” (quoted in Mattogno & Graf, Treblinka…, p. 67).

Thus the informant who had worked for four months at the alleged killing installations not only alleged that the air was sucked out of the chambers, but also spoke of ether and chlorine as other poisons used in the killings – gases which goes completely unmentioned by established Treblinka historiography. Furthermore, vacuum as killing method is mentioned by two other witnesses from Camp 2, Abe Kon (alias Stanislaw Ko(h)n) and the aforementioned Chil Rajchman, alias Henryk Reichmann (ibid.). A most widespread “misunderstanding”!
There are three further oddities to be found in gas chamber description: 1) the notion that the pulling out of gold teeth was carried out by a single “dentist”; 2) the size of the chambers – witnesses and historians generally assert that all the chambers in the new building were of the same size; and 3) the claim that the progress of the gassing was checked through small windows in the ceilings of the chambers. This claim is found in Sobibor testimony (Novitch, p. 56, 147), but as for Treblinka, historiography has it that the observation windows were placed in the entrance doors to the chambers (cf. Arad, p. 120).

By Thomas Kues