Vasily Grossman and Treblinka

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RobertChandler
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Vasily Grossman and Treblinka

#1

Post by RobertChandler » 27 Aug 2009, 09:43

Dear all,

I am the translator of Vasily Grossman's novel LIFE AND FATE. I am currently translating his article 'The Hell of Treblinka', which will be included in a selection of Grossman's stories and articles to be published by NYRB Classics next year. Grossman was with the Red Army when it first reached eastern Poland, and he wrote this article in September 1944. It is a remarkable article, powerful and vivid, but there are, inevitably, factual inaccuracies, and I am attempting to footnote these. If anyone with a particular interest in Treblinka would like to read through a draft of my translation, I would be only too glad to send it to them. The same goes for 'The Old Teacher', a story he wrote in 1943 about an Einsatzgruppen massacre.

Yours, Robert Chandler

michael mills
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Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Vasily Grossman and Treblinka

#2

Post by michael mills » 29 Aug 2009, 04:53

Robert,

I regret to have to tell you that you are 63 years too late. A English translation of Grossman's "The Hell of Treblinka" (with that title) was published in 1946 in this book:

"The Black Book : The Nazi Crime against the Jewish People"
Published New York : Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946

This book was produced by the "Jewish Black Book Committee", consisting of: World Jewish Congress, N.Y.; Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Moscow; Vaad leumi (Jewish National Council of Palestine), Jerusalem; American Committe of Jewish Writers, Artists and Scientists, New York.

I have read that book, and can assure you that it contains a chapter by Vassily Grossman with the title "Hell of Treblinka". Perhaps you could obtain that book and compare your own translation with the one contained therein.

From my recollection of that chapter, Grossman claimed that five million Jews had perished at Treblinka, an obvious gross exaggeration (no pun intended), perhaps for propaganda reasons. The chapter also stated that the killing was accomplished by electrocution and suffocation by steam, as well as by gassing with the exhaust of an internal combustion engine. The reference to steam chambers, which was common at that time, most probably arose from the confusion of genuine extermination camps such as Treblinka, with transit camps in which there were indeed steam chambers for the delousing of the clothes of persons passing through the transit camp. There was such a transit camp at Malkinia, very close to Treblinka, and confusion may have arisen since transports of Jews from both Warsaw and Bialystok passed through Malkinia, which was the point at which the railway line on which Treblinka is situated branched off from the Warsaw-Bialystok mainline.

The confusion between extermination camps and transit camps is most probably also the reason for the very strange report of the Polish Underground, sent to London in August 1942, which stated that the killing of Jews in Treblinka was carried out by means of a "delayed action gas", whereby the Jews emerged alive from the gas-chamber and then walked to another part of the camp, where they fell unconscious and were covered over with earth. Most probably an observer working for the Polish Underground had followed a transport to the transit camp at Malkinia, and seen a number of persons going through a delousing process, and had misidentified that location with the Treblinka extermination camp, about which reports had already been received.


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