If you only ever read one book on the Holocaust, make it this one (Treblinka - Jean-Francois Steiner)

Member Name: jem25

Product:	Treblinka - Jean-Francois Steiner
Date:	13/08/01 (1672 review reads)
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?Treblinka? is one of many true stories written about the fate of the Jews during World War II at the hands of the Nazis. It is told in all its gruesome detail, leaving the reader emotionally drained. I would like to begin by giving a brief description of the camp, as learnt from both the book and other research.

Treblinka was a concentration camp set up as part of Aktion Reinhard. In this camp, the lives of some 845,000 Polish Jews were extinguished, 29,000 Jews from elsewhere and 2,000 gypsies.

The camp originally had three gas chambers, built at the branch of the railway track. Each chamber was capable of killing 2,500 people each hour ? all of them believing that they were being allowed to shower at the end of a hellish journey. Between the end of August and the beginning of October 1942 ten more gas chambers were built to increase capacity.

Huge pyres were built to dispose of the bodies. The bones were then crushed and buried with the ashes.

Those who were too sick or infirm to be of suitable benefit within the camp were taken to the Lazerett (or the ?infirmary?). This was an incongruous looking door with a Red Cross flag flying above it. In fact, the door was merely a façade and behind it was a huge open-air ditch. Once through the door, they were immediately shot by SS men and Ukrainian workers. As they were shot, their bodies fell into the ditch.

The camp was made up of a reception area, a living area and an extermination area. At the reception area, men were separated from the women and children. In the early days of the camp, children were stripped and taken straight to the ?shower.?

To sort out the fit men, suitable for hard labour, aptitude tests were set. An example of these was a situation where Ukrainians, armed with, surrounded the men whips and guns. They were told that they would be beaten with whips and rifle butts. Any who fell would be shot. However, anyone wanting to give up
before the beating began were to feel free to step from the line, that it was their right to do so.

?Every man was tempted to step out if line and join his family ? but a mysterious force impelled them not to move ? to play the game of survival to the end.?

We then read that ?so great was the Jews? will to live that the ? ordeal lasted over a quarter of an hour ? it was not necessary to finish off those who had fallen ? they had died on their feet.?

One issue that the book deals with is the much-asked question ?How could the Jews of Europe have gone to their slaughter like six million lambs?? (New York Times Book Review). This question was asked by the younger generation Jews at the time of the Eichmann trial. ?Treblinka? sets out to show how people behaved identically due to careful conditioning by the SS ? the Germans demanded submissive behaviour and got it. It would not fitting for me to go into great detail as to why or how. I do not think that I could do the issue justice. To fully understand, I can only recommend that you read this book.

?Treblinka? tells of victory, pride and vindication, not of defeat, shame and extermination. There were many attempts to escape the living hell that was Treblinka. Some tried to jump from the trains, most not surviving the fall, others being shot by the escorts.

All of those attempting to escape from the camp itself were hanged in front of the others or shot so that they fell into the ditch. For every man that successfully escaped in the early days, 10 of those remaining were executed.

?Treblinka? tells the story of a resistance group that was formed with the purpose of getting at least one person out to tell the world of what was happening. It was literally a suicide mission. Dr Kurland, a kapo in the hospital, wrote many notes throughout his time in the camp. Of this, little survives.

?God is not concerned about my death or that of any single Jew, bu
t he is concerned with our collective disappearance.?

One man, whose son was part of the escape party told him ? Tell the world what you have seen, how we dies and how we rose again.?

Everyone involved knew that this escape plan was not to enable as many people as possible to survive. The ideas was that no matter how many perished in the attempt, if only one person made it out, then that person could tell the tale, testify to the unspeakable horrors and continue the Jewish line.

I will not go into details about the escape, as I do not want to spoil the book for those of you who choose to read it. Suffice to say that of the 600 who made it to the surrounding forests, only 40 were alive when the Red Army arrived one year later. Others had either been killed by Polish peasants, Ukrainian fascists and deserters from the German Army and Gestapo or denounced by frightened locals, afraid that they would be shot as collaborators if they helped.

This book has been written using solely the testimony of the survivors. All documentation was destroyed along with the camp at the end of the war. Some details were provided by the Polish Court of Inquiry of 1945 and by the Yad Vashem Institute as well as fresh interviews of the survivors by the author. The author has changed some names to protect their identities.

The edition that I own was published in 1969 by Corgi (translated from its original French). My copy contains a preface by Simone de Beavoir ? I do not know if later editions include this. It also has a number of photographs, some of which come from Himmler?s private collection. These show piles of bodies, close-ups of victims in rigor mortis, all trace of dignity removed.

Himmler himself said on 4 October 1943 that ?the extermination of the Jewish people ? is easy to talk about? and that it was ?a glorious page in our history which never has and never will be written.?

He was wrong on both counts. Th
e survivors of Treblinka risked their lives to ensure that the world found out about Nazi atrocities. Although I have no direct connection in any way to anyone who lived though this nightmare, I have not found it ?easy? to talk about it. The book is gruesome and tells horrific stories of events within the Treblinka concentration camp that stay with the reader, never to be forgotten or dismissed as purely history. This is the hardest op that I have written and I apologise to those of you who may feel that I have not done the subject the justice that it so richly deserves.

I would like to end with a couple of quotes that to me sum up the courage and perseverance of those whose tale is told.

The first is a line from a Hassidic poem:

?A man must descend very low to find the force to rise again.?

The second is taken from the book. It shows an acceptance of the situation in which they found themselves and how people tried to find humour in the face of the awful reality:

?Come on, cheer up old man, we?ll meet again some day in a better world ? in a shop window as soap.?

If the other person were ?in? on the ?joke? they would reply:

?Yes, but while from my fat they?ll make toilet soap, you?ll be a cheap laundry soap.?


Further reading on Treblinka:

?On the Camps at Treblinka? ? Rachel Auerbach (a survivor)
?A Year in Treblinka? ? Yankel Wiernik (a survivor)
?The Hell of Treblinka? ? a war correspondent in the Soviet Army who interviewed the first witnesses.

This book is available from www.amazon.co.uk
<br>ISBN: 0452011248
Price when I looked it up - £10.14 (list price £11.99)

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