A Second Look at Nazi Testimony
Willi Mentz:
Dr. Eberl was an ambitious commandant, and because of his ambition he ordered more transports than could be “processed” at one time in the camp. It was during this duration of time, when the trains had to wait outside the camp, that Jews would die on the train from the heat. This meant that there were times when “whole mountains of bodies lay on the platform”. This way of “processing” the prisoners continued until Christian Wirth came to Treblinka. Then everything changed, from the layout of the camp to how the transports were processed. This change in the camp, meant that there was a division between where the laborers/ prisoners kept from the transports were held and the other side of the camp, where prisoners were stripped and immediately sent to the gas chambers.
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With the change in the camp, also came a slight in change in some of the duties that we preformed as SS men. Stadie or Maetzig would speak to the Jews after they had gotten off the transports, informing them that there were at a resettlement area and would be given a bath, and new clothes before they continued their journey to another camp. They were then taken to the "transfer" area...
[(Quoted in The Good Old Days - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988, p. 245-247) Jewish Virtual Library].
Kurt Franz:
"I cannot say in total how many Jews were gassed in Treblinka. On average every day a large train arrived. Sometimes there were even two. This however was not so uncommon.
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In Treblinka I was commander of the Ukrainian guard unit as I had been in Belzec. In Treblinka as in Belzec the unit consisted of sixty to eighty men. The Ukrainians' main task was to man the guard posts around the camp perimeter. After the uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp more or less single-handedly for a month; however, during that period no gassings were undertaken.
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It was during that period that the original camp was demolished. Everything was leveled off off and lupins were planted...
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(Quoted in The Good Old Days - E. Klee, W. Dressen, V. Riess, The Free Press, NY, 1988., p. 247-249)
Railway Tracks in the Place where Treblinka once stood.
Image credit: Yad Vashem