On 12 October 1945, in Łódź, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz interviewed the person specified below as a witness, without swearing him in. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Forename and surname Jechiel Rajchman (Henryk Romanowski)
Age 33
Names of parents Efraim
Place of residence Łódź, Piramowicza Street 8
Occupation director of a factory
Religious affiliation Judaism
Criminal record none
[...]
After the arrival at the Treblinka railway station, the wagons were moved onto the ramp of the camp in groups. In my group, the men and women were ordered to strip naked and to fold their clothes. Then, a number of naked men was selected to carry the clothes. After the work had been completed (I had also been selected to do it), one of the Germans asked if there was a barber among us. I then volunteered as a barber and was ordered to get dressed again; I was then sent into the area of Camp no. 2 (in which there were gas chambers) in order to shave the naked women. The shaving took place in a single chamber, the first one, which had been turned into a barber’s shop.
The building housed ten gas chambers, each of them sixty four square meters and about two meters high. The entrance into each chamber led from the corridor; outside, each chamber had a hatch that could be lifted up to remove corpses.
The killing of people consisted of pumping air out and pumping in the gas from the motor. The motor was located in the extension next to the chambers. I can remember that once when the frequency of the transports was lower, the Germans performed an experiment and did not pump the gas in; they only pumped the air out. After 48 hours, when the chamber was opened, there were still people in there showing signs of life.
Next to the building with the ten chambers was another smaller one with three chambers and with a motor too.
[...]
On 26 October 1945, in Kosów, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz interviewed the person specified below as a witness, without swearing him in. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Forename and surname Stanisław Adamczyk
Age 33
Names of parents Ludwik
Place of residence Guty, Sokołów county
Occupation pointsman with Polish State Railways
Religious affiliation Roman-Catholic
Criminal record none
I think it was in April 1942 that I started working at the pointsman’s hut about two kilometers from Treblinka, in the direction of Kosów. When I started work, the camp, which contained Poles sent there for not meeting certain quotas and for other offences (it was a labor camp), was already operational. Later, another camp started to be built nearby. During the summer of 1942, maybe starting in August, huge transports of Jews started to arrive in the direction of Treblinka; there were 50 freight wagons in each transport on average. There were one, two or three transports daily. It continued like this approximately until Christmas of 1942. At that time, there were also shipments of clothes leaving Treblinka to the west. As for the cremation of human corpses, they were not cremated at the beginning; it only started later. The furnaces in the camp must have been working without a break, since there was always a smell of burning in the air and you could see a glow in the sky at night. When the wind was blowing from the camp, you could hear screams so piercing that you could not stand it. The camp was manned by SS-men and Ukrainians.
On 7 October 1945, in Łódź, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz, with the participation of Prosecutor J. Maciejewski, interviewed the person specified below as a witness, without swearing him in. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Forename and surname Stanisław Kon
Age 35
Names of parents Dawida
Place of residence Łódź, Gdańska Street 101
Occupation civil engineering technician
Religious affiliation Judaism
Criminal record none
[...]
As for the chambers, I could see them from a distance when I was repairing the fences.They looked like a shed. There was a Star of David on the top, and, apparently, an inscription “Judenstaat.” The shed was situated on high concrete foundations, so one entered it by climbing a few steps. There were concrete chambers inside on both sides of the corridor, and the entrance to each chamber led through a tightly fitting door. There was a hatch in each gas chamber that could be lifted up from the outside, which as lifted after the people inside had been exterminated, so a substantial number of corpses fell out thanks to inertia.
Each individual chamber was filled with people to such a degree that its door had to be locked using considerable force. The killing was conducted by pumping air out or pumping exhaust fumes in. Anyway, I know that there was a motor next to the shed which housed the gas chambers; I do not know if it was used to pump air out or to produce fumes and pump them in. [...]
On 7 October 1945 in Łódź, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz, in the presence of Prosecutor J. Maciejewski, interviewed the person named below as an unsworn witness. Having been advised of the criminal liability for giving false testimony, the witness testified as follows:
Name and surname Oskar Strawczyński
Age 39
Names of parents Josef
Place of residence Łódź, Piotrkowska Street 31, flat 4
Occupation merchant
Religious affiliation Jewish
Criminal record none
[...]
From the stories of Hersz Jabłkowski, who was a smith and came from Stoczek Węgrowski, I know what the gas chambers looked like.
Jabłkowski had worked on the gas chambers and later he was in our group for a while (let me explain that Jabłkowski was brought into the camp early, in May 1942, and at that time the camp was not properly organized, so he could visit camp 1 even though he was building chambers in camp 2).
His accounts indicate that on a high concrete foundation there were concrete chambers, whose sides were around three meters long, square, partly tiled. During the construction, showers were fixed to the ceiling but they were not connected to water pipes, and Jabłkowski said that when he was working there he had asked a German supervisor why theshowers were not connected to piping. The German replied that they would be connected later. Jabłkowski was employed building four gas chambers located in a single building. The building was entered by steps in the said foundation. The corridor inside had little doors leading to each chamber. The doors were so narrow that only a single person could squeeze through. This was to prevent anyone from turning back because the wave of the people behind and the narrowness of the entrance made it impossible. On the outside, each chamber had a huge hatch that could be lifted up, through which the corpses fell out.
The floor was also tiled and fell away towards the hatch. The purpose was twofold: to make the corpses fall out and the blood leak out more easily. [...]
Warsaw, 20 December 1945. Judge Antoni Krytowski, delegated to the Warsaw Division of the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, interviewed the person named below as a witness. Having advised the witness of the criminal liability for giving false testimony and of the significance of the oath, the judge swore the witness under art. 109 of Code of Criminal Procedure.
The witness testified as follows:
Name and surname Jan Sułkowski
Age b. 6 June 1921
Names of parents Janina and Władysław
Place of residence Warsaw, Krechowiecka Street 6, flat 29
Occupation master builder 2nd class
Religious affiliation Roman Catholic
Criminal record none
Relationship to the parties the witness’s three brothers were murdered by the Germans
[...]
I was involved in constructing barracks for about a week, and then I was assigned to building a gas chamber. I was involved in constructing it from the very foundations. Initially, I had no idea of the intended purpose of the building we were erecting. The SS-men supervising our work told us that it was going to be a bathhouse, and only later, when the building was in the final phase of construction, did I realize that it was a gas chamber. This was indicated by the presence of a special door made of thick sheet metal, sealed with rubber, locked with a screw and fixed to an iron frame, as well as the fact that in one of the compartments of the chamber there was some kind engine with iron pipes running through the roof to the remaining parts of the building. We worked on the gas chamber for about five weeks, and when it was finished, the Germans immediately started to murder Jews inside on a mass scale. [...]
On 9 October 1945, in Łódź, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz, with the participation of Prosecutor J. Maciejewski, interviewed the person specified below as a witness, without swearing him in. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Forename and surname Henryk Poswolski
Age 35
Names of parents Mariana
Place of residence Łódź, Wólczańska Street 234
Occupation factory finance and sales director
Religious affiliation Judaism
Criminal record none
[...]
I want to explain that from the accounts of the laborers who had been in the camp before, I know that at first the Germans tried to make their victims believe that they were only going to have a bath. To this end, a number of tricks was prepared, whose aim was to maintain the above-mentioned belief. I heard that after money and papers had been taken away, each victim was told to keep one zloty, which was to be used to pay for a bath. These “fees” were collected by a Ukrainian, sitting in a wooden box whose window faced the pathway leading to the gas chambers. During my presence, such things had already fallen into disuse. [...]
On 28 December 1945, in Siedlce, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz interviewed the person specified below as a witness, without swearing him in. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Forename and surname Leon Finkelsztein
Age 43
Names of parents Abram
Place of residence Warsaw, Jagiellońska Street 9-2
Occupation butcher
Religious affiliation Judaism
Criminal record none
[...]
The entrances to individual chambers ran from a corridor and were closed with a tightly fitting door. Outside, there were large hatches that could be lifted up, through which the corpses were removed. The walls of the cambers were tiled. Next to the chambers, in an extension, was a motor whose fumes were used to poison the victims. Death followed after about 20 minutes. Sometimes, when the motor was out of order, the chambers were sprinkled with chloride and then the victims suffered for a very long time. I can remember cases when after a whole night of being poisoned in such a way people were still alive and were thus buried.
It is not true that the chambers had sliding floors. Corpses were removed through the hatches, described above, and the laborers who were working there had to drag the victims out into the pits in a rush while being constantly beaten by the SS-men and Ukrainians.
For a while, there was a short railway with little wagons to transport corpses, but it was soon dismantled since the loading of the wagons took too much time, according to our "butchers." Corpses were simply dragged into the pits by the laborers. [...]
On 26 October 1945, in Kosów, Judge Z. Łukaszkiewicz interviewed the person specified below as a witness, without swearing him in. Having been advised of the criminal liability for making false declarations, the witness testified as follows:
Forename and surname Lucjan Puchała
Age 48
Names of parents Jan
Place of residence Wólka-Okrąglik, Sokołów county
Occupation level crossing attendant with Polish State Railways
Religious affiliation Roman-Catholic
Criminal record none
I worked on the railways at the Małkinia station during the occupation. In June 1942 I was assigned to be in charge of the construction of a railway track branch from the Treblinka station to the so-called gravel pit. The construction started on 1 June.
Being the person in charge I received a pass in German, which I submit now. At first, we did not know what the purpose of the railway track branch was; it was not until the end of the construction that I learnt, from conversations of the Germans, that the branch line was to run to a camp for Jews. The construction continued for two weeks and came to an end on 15 June. At the same time as the construction of the railway track branch, earthworks were carried out. The person in charge was a German, an SS captain.
[...]
Since the gravel pit was near the extermination camp, I was able to observe many facts connected with the operation of the camp. I know that right after 1 July 1942 three Bagier diggers were brought in, and used to dig pits that were several dozen meters long, about fifteen meters deep and about ten meters wide. On the day when the work on the railway track branch was completed, the building intended for housing the gas chambers was almost ready.
Right from the middle of July, railway transports of Jews started to arrive. At first, there was one transport a day, sometimes two. Transports were brought onto the track in groups of 20 wagons each, since the railway track branch could not hold more. There were from 200 to 280 people in each wagon (inscriptions in chalk on the wagons). Working in the gravel pit, I was able to observe the area of the camp from the top of a mound. I know that after a transport arrived, SS-men and Ukrainians threw Jews out of the wagons and separated men from the women and children. After they had been separated, they were ordered to strip naked and were then driven into a courtyard and killed with machine guns. The corpses were buried in the previously prepared pits.
This method was used until approximately the middle of August 1942, when the pits full of corpses and covered only with earth opened up as a result of decomposition of the corpses, and there was a horrible stench. Then, the transports were put on hold for about two weeks and during that time the top surface of the pits was cemented.
From about 1 September 1942 the operation of the camp intensified. That was the time when the chambers had already been operational and people started to be exterminated in large numbers. There were two or even three transports arriving every day without a break, each consisting of 60 wagons.
I am certain that during that time, until about January 1943, there were never fewer transports per day than two. After New Year’s Day 1943 the number of transports was considerably lower, but I cannot give any more details regarding this matter.
[...]
from:
Chronicles of Terror, by the Witold Pilecki Center for Totalitarian Studies.
