General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[barehl]

I assume that his book would incorporate the most accurate data available. When Arad says that Treblinka had five mass graves that were 50 meters by 25 meters by 10 meters, I believe him.

That was only a rough estimate. This is an actual photo of Treblinka.

http://organizedhell.devhub.com/img/upload/treblinka8.jpg

In the bottom of the photo, you can see the railroad track that ran on the west side of the camp (north is to the left). You can easily identify the train on the track.

You'll note a dividing fence in the center. The buildings on the left side of the photo below the wooded area were guard's quarters. If memory serves, the two large buildings surrounded by a fence on the left side were quarters for Ukrainians who were used for labor. The smaller buildings were guards quarters, stores, and living areas. Note that the guards' area is separated by trees from the extermination area.

The three long buildings next to the railroad on the lower right were the intake from the trains. These were designed to look like a normal train station.

In the bottom center of the photo, you can see two buildings with a large space in between. One was for women, the other for men. Directly above the left-hand building, you can see a whitish path next to the fence. It goes up and then angles to the right to a building with a whitish roof. This path with solid fences on both sides was the infamous "tunnel" where people walked naked after being disrobed in the two buildings, supposedly to a shower. The destination building with the whitish roof is the gas chamber.

Directly above the gas chamber, you can see two narrow, parallel black rectangles. These are two of the crematories. Above this, you can see three of the mass grave-sites. Note that you can still see the earthen banks next to them. Directly above the middle grave, you can see a single crematory.

To the right of the double crematories, you can see a guard tower. There is another guard tower visible at the top right corner of the wooded area. There a guard tower visible at the top left in the open area next to the fence-line. Another guard tower is visible at the bottom right corner, next to the railroad track.

To the right and down from the gas chamber, you can see another two mass graves next to the bank and fence that kept this area from being visible from the intake area.

There are five mass graves easily recognizable in this photo. Note that these graves are not the same size or shape. In particular, the two towards the bottom are not rectangular.

 

[Nessie]

A few points:

1. Captain Howdy has correctly explained what I was saying about eyewitness testimony. There is no contradiction.

So according to you eye witness evidence is not evidence but it is part of the evidence, which is contradictory.

The case in which the "give the name of a gassed Jew" challenge is valid is when facing the claim (which is rather common, but disclaimed by real experts) that the extermination of the Jews in gas chambers is well documented, even "the best documented event in history", or that "we know they were gassed from the Nazi's own records." When faced with those who make such claims, then this challenge is quite valid. However, when dealing with historians who concede the lack of documentary evidence for homicidal gassing at Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc. the "give me a name" challenge is meaningless. The function of the challenge, therefore, is to force holocaust historians to publicly admit a fact (the lack of documentary evidence for homicidal gassings) that they are well aware of but generally prefer to brush under the carpet.

What documentation is there to support denier/revisionist claims that Jews were not gassed but instead transited elsewhere from the likes of Treblinka II?

 

[barehl]

In terms of cremation, we can simply examine technology that was readily available at the time.

Titanic for example required steam for its engines. This was provided by 24 double ended and 5 single ended boilers, each with three furnaces. This was 159 furnaces total. It could run through its entire bunker supply of 7,400 tons of coal in eight days. Thus we have a consumption rate of 5.8 tons of coal per furnace per day. This did not require as much labor as you might expect. Men worked six hour shifts and fed all three furnaces on one end of a boiler. So, one man shoveled 1,450 lbs of coal per hour.

If people were coal, you could consume 700,000 people in Titanic's boilers in 61 days. However, people are not like coal or charcoal; they are more like green wood. So, the consumption rate is about half of that. It would then take about 122 days to consume 700,000 people using 159 furnaces. Of course, Treblinka did not have 159 furnaces so we need to adjust this.

What in fact did Treblinka have? If we examine both surviving and photographed furnaces at Dachau, Auschwitz, and Majdanek, we see a similar design. Given the configuration, these were probably somewhat similar to the Majdanek layout.

http://www.en.truthaboutcamps.eu/__data/assets/image/0012/2505/n4.jpg

We can see six furnaces in the picture. If this was similar, then Treblinka could have had 18 furnaces. However, the dimensions don't match. One Titanic boiler was 15' 9" and contained three furnaces. Since the row of crematories was around 80' we could fit five Titanic boilers in this space for at least 15 furnaces. With three rows of these we would have roughly 45 Titanic equivalent furnaces total. This would put the disposal of 700,000 bodies at about 431 days. This does appear to be reasonably inline with what has been suggested.

I do understand that the Wikipedia article states that bodies were exhumed and burned in open pits. This claim is rather absurd. We know that there were crematories on site and these can be seen in the photo. An open air process would require vastly more fuel and completely conflicts with technology available at the time and the well established record of crematories at other locations such as Dachau and Auschwitz.

 

[barehl]

In addition, I did answer your question but I didn't do the math for you. I will now do the math. Seven hundred thousand people buried in five mass graves. Each mass grave is 50 meters by 25 meters by 10 meters. 5 X 50 X 25 X 10=62,500 cubic meters. 700,000/62,500=11.2 bodies per cubic meter.

One person is good for about 7 lbs of cremains. For this many people, you need about 40,000 sq ft. That's roughly one football field 18" deep.

We would have measurements of the depth of the ash. We would have forensic reports on an analysis of the ash. We would have pictures of the ash. We would have an estimate of how many bodies are represented by the ash. We would have more than a Russian saying there was some ash.

I know what cremains look like. I suspect however that the vast majority of people do not. The photos that were taken at Majdanek were of charred bodies, not cremains. Other photos that were taken included recognizable human bones. I do not imagine that most people (including Russian soldiers) would recognize cremains or find them worth documenting with black and white photography.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

This is incorrect. The bodies were originally buried onsite in mass graves. When one would get full, they would open another one. The view of open grave was blocked by a ridge of dirt. These ridges are visible in the photos. When it was clear that the space onsite would be exhausted, crematory furnaces were built. This was initially one but was then expanded to three. These are also visible in photos. This then became the primary disposable of the bodies. I'm not aware that any bodies were dug up but there were disposal areas for cremated remains. So, again, I don't understand what the problem would be with space. They absolutely never buried 700,000 people. The vast majority of those were cremated. This is completely consistent with having to expand the crematories from one to three.

We must be reading different sources because your above description doesn't sound like the history of Treblinkia that I have read. I thought the bodies that were cremated were not cremated in furnaces but over an open pit. What I have read is also pretty clear that bodies were at first buried and then dug up and cremated. The Jews that were gassed after Himmler ordered that the buried Jews be dug up and cremated were taken directly to the fire pits instead of being buried first. But for the first seven or eight months, the bodies were buried.

 

[Cyrix686]

Barehl, that is not an actual photograph of Treblinka, it is clearly a modern computerised reconstruction of how it is thought the camp looked.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

That was the Australian holocaust denier Richard Krege. Richard Krege took some photos of himself with a GPR at Treblinka 14 years ago. He released one scan of raw data claiming there was no disturbed soil at Treblinka but never actually got the data processed nor was able to say where the data was being analysed. Oddly he completely forgot about the photos of bomb craters and mass graves photographed by Lukaszkiewicz's team. If you can find any grid map of where he searched at Treblinka you are doing better than all the holocaust deniers have when questioned for the last 14 years.

How did Richard justify making the claim there were no mass graves? We know that Colls found more than seven using the same equipment. What were you thought on this Captain Howdy? Do you think Richard Krege's claim of no soil disturbances and thus no mass graves is compelling?



I see. So although you know a professional forensic expert and their university team found more graves and are about to publish, you will continue to have doubts based on the five graves mentioned by Arad. But doesn't Arad clearly say there were more graves to be uncovered?


Well isn't that good news. We know a body fits into 0.069022m³ from this very thread. 11.2 bodies per cubic meter. 11.2 X 0.069022 = 0.77 cubic metres. You have not only proven that there was ample volume but as other graves exist we have an excess of space. Thank you Captain Howdy. Your considerations are now at an end.



We have a Polish forensic reports on the ash We have pictures of the human ash Justice Lukaszkiewicz was Polish A Russian didn't lead the Polish criminal investigation. You did. You can read the report by Justice Lukaszkiewicz. Rachel Auerbach from the team lived in Israel from 1950. Is Israel also untrustworthy to you?



You just proved Sebastianus was 100% wrong with your own mathematics in this very post.

The size of a boy is 0.069022m³ You calculated there must be 11.2 bodies per cubic meter. 11.2 X 0.069022 = 0.77 cubic metres. You proved Sebastianus is wrong.

Please show me a picture of the human ash. Be warned: I have seen the pictures you have posted in the past. I have searched the internet high and low for pictures of the death camps. I don't claim to have done exhaustive research into this question so it is likely that I have not seen every photograph of Treblinka. If you have digital copies of photographs that cannot be found with a google image search and that you haven't already posted, please show them to me. If these are photographs that have been published in books and are not available for viewing on the web, please tell me where I can find them. I will attempt to track them down. But please don't show me this and believe that your work is done.

In addition, .069022m³ for an averaged sized body is not realistic. Half the Jews in the ghetto did not take up less than 2.5 cubic feet space. If they did, your formula of dividing total space by the average body cannot be used because Jews are not liquid. You also need to consider not just the size of the bodies but the number of bodies and the time required to fill the mass graves. Careful arrangement was out of the question. You need to consider all the aspects of burying bodies to understand what is realistic, what is impossible and what is not.

Finally, I don't engage in speculation based on knowledge that might be discovered in the future.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

That was only a rough estimate. This is an actual photo of Treblinka.

http://organizedhell.devhub.com/img/upload/treblinka8.jpg

In the bottom of the photo, you can see the railroad track that ran on the west side of the camp (north is to the left). You can easily identify the train on the track.

You'll note a dividing fence in the center. The buildings on the left side of the photo below the wooded area were guard's quarters. If memory serves, the two large buildings surrounded by a fence on the left side were quarters for Ukrainians who were used for labor. The smaller buildings were guards quarters, stores, and living areas. Note that the guards' area is separated by trees from the extermination area.

The three long buildings next to the railroad on the lower right were the intake from the trains. These were designed to look like a normal train station.

In the bottom center of the photo, you can see two buildings with a large space in between. One was for women, the other for men. Directly above the left-hand building, you can see a whitish path next to the fence. It goes up and then angles to the right to a building with a whitish roof. This path with solid fences on both sides was the infamous "tunnel" where people walked naked after being disrobed in the two buildings, supposedly to a shower. The destination building with the whitish roof is the gas chamber.

Directly above the gas chamber, you can see two narrow, parallel black rectangles. These are two of the crematories. Above this, you can see three of the mass grave-sites. Note that you can still see the earthen banks next to them. Directly above the middle grave, you can see a single crematory.

To the right of the double crematories, you can see a guard tower. There is another guard tower visible at the top right corner of the wooded area. There a guard tower visible at the top left in the open area next to the fence-line. Another guard tower is visible at the bottom right corner, next to the railroad track.

To the right and down from the gas chamber, you can see another two mass graves next to the bank and fence that kept this area from being visible from the intake area.

There are five mass graves easily recognizable in this photo. Note that these graves are not the same size or shape. In particular, the two towards the bottom are not rectangular.

That's a photograph of a model of the camp. It is not a photograph of the camp.

 

[barehl]

Barehl, that is not an actual photograph of Treblinka, it is clearly a modern computerised reconstruction of how it is thought the camp looked.

Yes, you must be right. Other photos that I've seen show that the site had been razed. That must only be a recreation. This is a real photo of one of the pits:

http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/pic/bigp41.jpg

 

[barehl]

We must be reading different sources because your above description doesn't sound like the history of Treblinkia that I have read. I thought the bodies that were cremated were not cremated in furnaces but over an open pit. What I have read is also pretty clear that bodies were at first buried and then dug up and cremated. The Jews that were gassed after Himmler ordered that the buried Jews be dug up and cremated were taken directly to the fire pits instead of being buried first. But for the first seven or eight months, the bodies were buried.

This picture shows clothing. This is inconsistent with being cremated. This person was clearly buried with clothing and the body decomposed in place.

http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/pic/bigp42.jpg


Here is a second photo showing more bones and more clothing.

http://www.deathcamps.org/treblinka/pic/bigp43.jpg


It is possible that some of the older bodies were also cremated. Doing this in an open pit would require an extreme amount of fuel. I would estimate at least 750 tons of coal for a single pit. That's about 75 train cars full of coal. It is not possible to have sustained combustion in an open pit without continually adding fuel, you really need an enclosed furnace. This is the same technology that was used for bread ovens; it's just larger. The closest contemporary use would be the boiler for steam heat for a building. Let me put this a different way. Without building enclosed furnaces, I don't believe they could have delivered enough coal to the location to consume 700,000 bodies. But, there is absolutely no reason why they would not have built furnaces as they did at Dachau, Auschwitz, and several other documented places. The fact that there are whole bones and clothing on site shows that not all of the bodies were moved; some indeed had to be left buried.

Edited by LashL: 

Changed hotlinked images to regular links. Please see Rule 5.

 

[barehl]

Half the Jews in the ghetto did not take up less than 2.5 cubic feet space.

The human body has roughly the same weight as water. Muscular men and children tend to be slightly heavier than water while women tend to be slightly lighter. The weight of water is about 64 lbs per cubic foot. I would use 2.33 rather than 2.5. This is for a recent corpse. After decomposition you have about 40 lbs of bones taking up only about 0.5 cubic feet depending on if the skull collapses. If the body is cremated then it only takes up about 1 quart of volume.

If they did, your formula of dividing total space by the average body cannot be used because Jews are not liquid. You also need to consider not just the size of the bodies but the number of bodies and the time required to fill the mass graves. Careful arrangement was out of the question. You need to consider all the aspects of burying bodies to understand what is realistic, what is impossible and what is not.

You are correct that bodies do not conform to a space like a liquid. However, once rigor mortis wears off, the bodies do compact surprisingly well. Your estimate of 2.5 cubic feet is probably pretty close.

Finally, I don't engage in speculation based on knowledge that might be discovered in the future.

A Polish prisoner who helped build Treblinka II in May, 1942 said, "East of the gas chambers and close by them were huge ditches for burying the corpses. A number of these ditches were approximately 50m long, 25m wide, and 10m deep. The ditches were dug by an excavator brought from the quarry at the Treblinka 1 forced labour camp."

And, we have the testimony of Avraham Lindwasser. He said, "we were immediately ordered to take hold of bodies and drag them towards the graves."

This was August 28, 1942. He then says, "I was occupied in this work for approximately one month, a month and a half, perhaps less, perhaps more..."

So, during this time, we did have mass graves. But, we also know that Eberl was relieved of command in August 1942 because the site could not handle all of the influx from the transports. He was replaced by Franz Stangl who came from Sobibor.

Then we have the testimony of Franz Suchomel who was one of the guards at the site from August 1942 to October 1943. He said, "When in the winter of 1942/43 the burning of corpses in the upper camp was introduced Wirth was frequently in Treblinka. He came with Floss a cremation specialist, I believe from Belzec.

I remember how horrified Stangl was when he first heard of this change. He told me about this and asked how it could happen that corpses already in a state of decomposition should now be burnt.

Wirth then sent Hackenholt with a digger to clear the graves."

Okay, so now we have a timeline. Construction began in May, 1942. Extermination didn't start until July, 1942. The camp was overloaded by August 1942 and Eberl was replaced with Stangl. The gas chambers were expanded by October 1943. During the winter, they began doing cremation. Since they went to the trouble to bring in a cremation specialist, we can assume that they did not simply create fires in open pits. This must have been a more sophisticated cremation effort. At this point, no more bodies were buried. I assume that bodies that were buried from December forward would still burn because there should not have been much decomposition. These were likely moved. The "digger" that he refers to is a crane with a clamshell bucket.

However, bodies that were buried from July through November of 1942 were probably heavily decomposed. It appears that after a visit by Himmler in March 1943, there was at least some attempt made to open older graves and dispose of the bodies. This is probably where we get the description of burning in open pits. Most of the extermination is completed by August of 1943. That gives us something like two months of full capacity where bodies were buried and eight months where bodies were cremated. Since the gas chambers were increased by a factor of six, the initial period is only good for the equivalent of about half a month of full capacity. So, again, we can assume that about 75% were cremated immediately after death. This drastically cuts down the space required for burial.

 

[barehl]

I will now do the math. Seven hundred thousand people buried in five mass graves. Each mass grave is 50 meters by 25 meters by 10 meters. 5 X 50 X 25 X 10=62,500 cubic meters. 700,000/62,500=11.2 bodies per cubic meter.

So, let's now run through that one more time.
The above estimated size would seem to fit within the estimated area for whole space which was 200 x 250 meters. This would only occupy 1/8th of that space so the estimate could be small. I would imagine twice this size. On the other hand, I would guess that the depth of 10 meters is too high. But, if we assume half that depth and twice the area, it works out the same.

164' * 82' * 33' * 5 = 2.2 million square feet.

Without even grabbing a calculator, you can see that at 2.5 cubic feet per body, we are close to 1 million bodies. It actually comes to 880,000. Now, the maximum estimate for exterminations is 900,000. If, as I've already suggested from testimony, they only buried 1/4 of those, they easily fit. In fact, they would still fit at 10 sq ft per body. And, this is about the maximum that one body could take up. So, do you agree that we've closed the issue of burial space?

 

[MaxMurx]

People who wish to know the facts about the Holocaust would do well to start here:

A good antidote to the denial drivel

http://www.holocaust-history.org/denial/revisionism-qa.shtml

Could you please one time come with real evidence. Your link leads to a list of books, all links to alleged documents are dead.

The only document I found after searching the complete site myself (called quote: This inventory is absolute and irrefutable proof of the existence of a gas chamber fitted with dummy showers in Krematorium III.
is an inventory list of a morgue (a morgue by the way is no crematory). The proof was a gas tight door being on that list.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/19430624-inventory/

Another "proof" is based on the fact that the inventory list contains some "Brausen" but no water piping material, so that must be "dummy showers". First of all a "shower" in German is "Dusche". "Brause" is Northern German slang for "Dusche". "Brause" however is the official word for "hand spray" which is common in every morgue and everything but exceptional.
Second the absence of piping is very simple to explain: Those come with the buiding shell and are not installed by the plumber. Third: The "irrefutable proof of the gas tight door" must take into account that the German journal "Gasschutz und Luftschutz" (Gas protection and air raid protection) since 1931 nearly in every issue shows and ad with exactly such a gas tight door with peep hole simply because it was the standard door of German air raid shelters, obligatory by German law (see link to all issues of the Journal below).
Forth: The inventory list also lists more than ten "Kugellampen" (ball shaped lamps). According to the Waffen SS security directions for delousing chambers using Zyklon B no kind of illumination has to be in such a room due to the explosivity of the gas mixture. Illumination according to those directions, if necessary, would have to be provided from outside through the peep hole. That makes the document a proof that the room was not intended for what it is said by Holocaust-History people that it was.
Believe it or not, I am not a denier of the Holocaust. What I want however, are proofs, proofs which are real proofs. Not misinterpretations of documents. wrong translations of documents, speculations about if something was possible to have happened, concluding that it then must have happened, or eye witness testimony which is sometimes believable, sometimes it is not and it would be great to know which one is believable and which one is not.
Two days ago I read in a Nizkor page that gasoline engines were used in certain camps. Until recently those were Diesel engines. That is simply not possible. You cannot change the official narrative only because so called "deniers" challenge some details. That makes nothing better. In contrary. Exactly that is the fuel igniting Holocaust denialism. People must understand what a "proof" is and then present those proofs and nothing else. No forgery, no fabrication, no wild speculation. Then "denial" will disappear the next day.

http://www.bbk.bund.de/DE/Service/F... und Luftschutz/Gasschutz_und_Luftschutz.html

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Barehl, that is not an actual photograph of Treblinka, it is clearly a modern computerised reconstruction of how it is thought the camp looked.

Yes. I must admit it was very strange claim considering it was also in colour.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

The size of a body is 0.069022m³ You calculated there must be 11.2 bodies per cubic meter. 11.2 X 0.069022 = 0.77 cubic metres. You proved Sebastianus is wrong.

Please show me a picture of the human ash.

Before doing so I ask you to acknowledge what has happened here.

You offered your own mathematics that showed there was more than enough space to bury 700,000 people, following exactly the only methods and only information that you said you would use. Are you now satisfied that you proved there was enough space? Once you have acknowledged this I will answer your further questions in detail. In addition, do you now agree that the head of the Polish investigations was not a Russian but rather a Pole.

In addition, .069022m³ for an averaged sized body is not realistic.

Yes it is. I have already proven this for a male. Children are smaller.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9549153&postcount=6627

 

[barehl]

So, now we've determined that space would not be an issue. What about everything else? If we estimated that during the 8 months that a crematory was operational that 400,000 were killed then 1600 people would have to have been exterminated every day. Was this possible? In terms of labor, it would not have been much of an issue. You could probably move that many people with a crew 7 working each six hour shift. That would only be 28 workers. So, that's obviously not a limitation.

However, some estimates nevertheless seem high to me. I've read for example, that 377,000 were killed by the winter of 1942. As I've already stated, the site was over capacity in August 1942. My highest estimate by winter would be no more than 170,000.

I do have to admit that many of the claimed figures don't really match. One estimate was that the maximum death rate was 15,000 per day. The problem with this estimate is that they would have surpassed Auschwitz in just four months. Secondly, that would have required three trainloads a day. Neither of these seem likely.

It has been suggested that the location was only used for the disposal of people who died in transit on the trains. One source for this line of reasoning would be here: Institute for Historical Review

In fact, many of the things that you've said were quite similar to what appears there. There do seem to be inconsistent reports with the function and operation of Treblinka II. However, I am particularly struck by one bold statement on this website:

"credible reports of deportations of Jews from Treblinka refute the allegation that all Jews sent there were destined for extermination, and indicate instead that the camp functioned as a transit center.

In the aftermath of the April 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising, for example, Jews were transported from Warsaw to Treblinka II. As some of the deportees later confirmed, after a "selection" in the camp, trainloads of hundreds of Jews were taken from Treblinka to Lublin (Majdanek), and possibly other camps. Several thousand Jews (at least) were transferred by German authorities from Treblinka to other camps, a postwar German court determined.

Letters and postcards that arrived in the Warsaw ghetto from Jews who, by all accounts, had been deported to Treblinka, indicate that the camp was a transit center from where Jews were resettled in the occupied Soviet territories. These messages, which arrived from settlements and camps in Belarus (Byelorussia), Ukraine, and even Russia proper (near Smolensk), were written by Jews who had been deported in 1942. Some letters and cards had been sent by mail and some had arrived through the underground. Many mentioned that the senders were working hard, but confirmed that they (and often their children) were being fed."

Resettled? So, this is clearly saying that there was no systematic killing of Jews. This will probably require another post because if the suggestion is that Treblinka was nothing more than a transit center it will be necessary to track movements from each location to figure out where the populations should have ended up.

Secondly, this does bring up the question of Heinrich Himmler. Was he in fact much more compassionate than has been suggested? I do know that he had the SS train with live ammunition before the start of the war. I also know that he told the SS men that it would be okay to rape German women so that Germany would have better children. If this was his view towards his own men and German women, one does tend to wonder how much lower his view of other groups might have been.

 

[barehl]

Yes. I must admit it was very strange claim considering it was also in colour.

I don't think so. The Wizard of Oz came out in 1939 and was famous for its use of color film. However, for still photography, Kodak had Kodachrome 35mm film available in 1938. German color film was also introduced in 1936. However, color would be inconsistent if you assumed the image came from typical aerial reconnaissance. The images from recon in 1944 are in black and white don't show the presence of a camp.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

The human body has roughly the same weight as water. Muscular men and children tend to be slightly heavier than water while women tend to be slightly lighter. The weight of water is about 64 lbs per cubic foot. I would use 2.33 rather than 2.5. This is for a recent corpse. After decomposition you have about 40 lbs of bones taking up only about 0.5 cubic feet depending on if the skull collapses. If the body is cremated then it only takes up about 1 quart of volume.


You are correct that bodies do not conform to a space like a liquid. However, once rigor mortis wears off, the bodies do compact surprisingly well. Your estimate of 2.5 cubic feet is probably pretty close.



A Polish prisoner who helped build Treblinka II in May, 1942 said, "East of the gas chambers and close by them were huge ditches for burying the corpses. A number of these ditches were approximately 50m long, 25m wide, and 10m deep. The ditches were dug by an excavator brought from the quarry at the Treblinka 1 forced labour camp."

And, we have the testimony of Avraham Lindwasser. He said, "we were immediately ordered to take hold of bodies and drag them towards the graves."

This was August 28, 1942. He then says, "I was occupied in this work for approximately one month, a month and a half, perhaps less, perhaps more..."

So, during this time, we did have mass graves. But, we also know that Eberl was relieved of command in August 1942 because the site could not handle all of the influx from the transports. He was replaced by Franz Stangl who came from Sobibor.

Then we have the testimony of Franz Suchomel who was one of the guards at the site from August 1942 to October 1943. He said, "When in the winter of 1942/43 the burning of corpses in the upper camp was introduced Wirth was frequently in Treblinka. He came with Floss a cremation specialist, I believe from Belzec.

I remember how horrified Stangl was when he first heard of this change. He told me about this and asked how it could happen that corpses already in a state of decomposition should now be burnt.

Wirth then sent Hackenholt with a digger to clear the graves."

Okay, so now we have a timeline. Construction began in May, 1942. Extermination didn't start until July, 1942. The camp was overloaded by August 1942 and Eberl was replaced with Stangl. The gas chambers were expanded by October 1943. During the winter, they began doing cremation. Since they went to the trouble to bring in a cremation specialist, we can assume that they did not simply create fires in open pits. This must have been a more sophisticated cremation effort. At this point, no more bodies were buried. I assume that bodies that were buried from December forward would still burn because there should not have been much decomposition. These were likely moved. The "digger" that he refers to is a crane with a clamshell bucket.

However, bodies that were buried from July through November of 1942 were probably heavily decomposed. It appears that after a visit by Himmler in March 1943, there was at least some attempt made to open older graves and dispose of the bodies. This is probably where we get the description of burning in open pits. Most of the extermination is completed by August of 1943. That gives us something like two months of full capacity where bodies were buried and eight months where bodies were cremated. Since the gas chambers were increased by a factor of six, the initial period is only good for the equivalent of about half a month of full capacity. So, again, we can assume that about 75% were cremated immediately after death. This drastically cuts down the space required for burial.

The problem is that that is not what happened. At least 700,000 Jews were killed at Treblinka up to December 1942. We know this from the Hoefle Telegram. The pits were disinterred starting in February or March 1943. So at least 700,000 bodies were buried before they were dug up and burned. Do you acknowledge that 700,000 bodies could not be buried within the space allocated?

 

[CaptainHowdy]

So everybody agrees that there has never been another mass grave that held as many bodies and was packed as densely as the mass graves at Treblinka.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Barehl, that is not an actual photograph of Treblinka, it is clearly a modern computerised reconstruction of how it is thought the camp looked.

It was pretty interesting so I looked it up. It's a 2006 model by Peter Laponder. I don't know anything else about him. He makes models of historic sites for museums. Here is his page on his historic models.
http://www.deathcamps.org/websites/peter/

Here is a variety of reconstructions of the Treblinka gas chambers on ARC. It is interesting as it offers citations from eyewitnesses to explain how they created their reconstructions. I believe this is on topic as it concerns eyewitnesses.
http://www.deathcamps.org/gas_chambers/gas_chambers_trebcad.html