Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Treblinka's "new and improved" killing machine Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Eberl,Stangl,Treblinka,Wirth Archive/File: camps/aktion.reinhard/treblinka treblinka.gas4 Last-Modified: 1994/02/11 Unlike Sobibor, where the killing stopped while new gas chambers were being constructed, the slaughter at Treblinka continued unabated except between August 28 and September 3, 1942, when Wirth and his henchmen cleaned up the special horror left behind by the incompetent Dr. Eberl. "Construction of the new gas chambers began in early September. The new building comprised ten gas chambers, each 4 x 8 square meters, although according to some sources the new building included only six gas chambers." <1> "In place of the three old chambers ... the ten new chambers had a combined area of 320 square meters (or 192 square meters if there were only six). The height of the new rooms was 2 meters -- about 60cm lower that the old ones. There had been instances in the old chambers in which little children had not been asphyxiated because the gas rose to the ceiling, and this was taken into account in planning the height of the ceilings in the new chambers. Lowering the ceiling also reduced the chambers' total cubic volume, reduced the total gas requirement for killing the victims, and shortened asphyxiation time....The doors contained a small glass window, through which the SS men and Ukrainians checked to see what was happening and ascertained whether the victims were already dead. The entrance to the corridor was covered by a dark Jewish ceremonial curtain taken from an unidentified synagogue. On it was inscribed in Hebrew: 'This is the Gateway to God. Righteous men will pass through.' A gable over the entrance door bore a large Star of David. ... The new gas chambers could absorb a maximum of 2,300 people (six chambers) or 3,800 people (ten chambers) simultaneously, whereas the old one could hold only 600. With the inauguration of the new gas chambers, in the middle of October 1942, the old ones ceased to function. ..." The camp commander, Stangl, replied with the following when he was asked, during his trial, how many people could be murdered in one day: "Regarding the question of what was 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." <1> Adalbert Ruckerl, "NS-Vernichtungslager in Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, DTV Dokumente" Munchen, 1977, p. 204; Yad Vashem Archives, Treblinka-Franz, Band 10, pp. 2053-2055 Excerpted from....---------------------------------------------- BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987. ISBN 0-253-3429-7
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