A New Revisionist Interpretation of Operation Reinhardt

[bombsaway]

Nonsense there is evidence of people stating they transited to Birkenau from the Malkinia transit camp.

I believed so too, but Nick shed some light on that evidence and I don't think it's very strong. The evidence is they were transited in from somewhere else.

Saying he is in error and not a liar, perhaps means you wish the evidence to fit in with your thoughts.

I'm not making hard determinations about what transpired with Wiernik, all I'm showing is there are plausible alternatives to your theory that he was describing a transit camp in Malkinia. We are both speculating but I believe it is you who is making hard and fast determinations.

[SanityCheck]

But hey, I'm happy to ignore you if you'll accept that your failure to integrate T4 into your analysis means your entire argument is stillborn from the outset. THAT is a hurdle that MUST be cleared, since the German SS personnel at Treblinka are so very clearly part of the core story.

Hardly the case... The hurdle in general is cleared by VEJ Bd. 3 Dok. 101 (S. 275-276) / PMJ Vol. 3 pp. 286-288. It's a Foreign Office policy memo from August 1940 namedropping Brack and Boehler's office as regards the "organization of transport". It shows that the Madagascar Plan, which also included registration of Jewish assets, envisaged the can-do crew's involvement. It shows that such a "well-attuned organization with a wealth of experience" could have easily been part of a comprehensive resettlement operation. What we're left with is previous documented leading candidates for a Jewish resettlement operation - back when no putative extermination plan was in place.

This would 'count' as acknowledging the T4-AR link by analogy, except Brack was sent to military service in Yugoslavia and had nothing to do with hands-on events in the AR camps, nor did Bouhler. The persistent documented and witnessed links concerned couriering some property plunder and paying for the T4 personnel who were now serving in Poland, is all.

The Gekrat transport company might have been a better bet than taking crematoria stokers and psychiatric nurses from the T4 institutes, but this wasn't the personnel source they raided. So the T4 institute veterans had no experience of organising transit as they were the end destination, they did have experience with carrying out a deception routine for victims slated to be euthanised and killed.

In terms of manpower, the AR camps absorbed a few officers and 100 German personnel, which was not much different to SS-Sonderkommando Kulmhof with a company of order police instead of also absorbing Trawnikis.

The T4-AR connection also meant that when German AR personnel were interrogated, they admitted to gassings in T4 institute and at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. These statements cannot be ignored, especially now we have the Niemann album reinforcing the links/transfer and continued involvement of T4 on the backend of administration.

They mean the ignore-testimonies and reinterpret-documents-in-isolation tactics fail, as they would do anyway.

One must have an answer for whether T4 used gassing or not and if it did, as John Wear argued in an Inconvenient History article, then how come this wasn't used in AR, despite a CO bottle being found at Belzec and one marked with Jennerwein/Brenner, T4 pseudonyms, at Majdanek, the latter at a time when the Polish-Soviet investigation could not possibly have known this micro-detail.

This doesn't rule out arguing that T4 gassings were also a hoax, but the origins of this lie elsewhere; neither Poles nor Jews were directly involved in spreading news about euthanasia gassings in Germany/Austria, the Polish underground only reported on the test gassing in Poznan and some tidbits on Sonderkommando Lange prior to its recycling in Chelmno.

So very rapidly one has from an origins-of-story perspective to consider
1. T4
2. Poznan and Sonderkommando Lange
3. Chelmno
4. the AR camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka

This makes sense also because of how BCST are euphemised in the Korherr report: consistently, with 'special treatment' edited out on Himmler's orders, and various other points of comparison in documents and eyewitness claims.

Partial and ad hoc explanations based on some (German) documents or other sources are 'short blanket' explanations; they might cover one part but at the expense of leaving another uncovered and getting cold.

[Nazgul]

I'm not making hard determinations about what transpired with Wiernik, all I'm showing is there are plausible alternatives to your theory that he was describing a transit camp in Malkinia. We are both speculating but I believe it is you who is making hard and fast determinations.

The Siedlce-Malkinia track was a single track, not twin like a highway type,used with major Polish railway lines such as the main Warsaw-Bialystok track, yet Wiernik describes a train passing, they were not stopped at a siding, apparently in motion. Here is an image of that reconstructed Siedlce line.



Here is a short quote from Wierniks book. Keep in mind that Treblinka II is some 20 minutes away by steam train.

Amidst untold torture, we finally reached Malkinia, where our train remained for the night. The Ukrainian guards came into our car and demanded our valuables. Everyone who had any surrendered them just to gain a little longer lease on life. Unfortunately, I had nothing of value because I had left my home unexpectedly and because I had been unemployed, gradually selling all the valuables I possessed to keep going.

In the morning our train got under way again. We saw a train passing by filled with disheveled, half-naked, starved people. They spoke to us, but we couldn't understand what they were saying.

As the day was hot and sultry, we suffered greatly from thirst. Looking out of the window, I saw peasants peddling bottles of water at 100 zlotys a piece. I had but 10 zlotys on me in silver, with Marshal Pilsudski's effigy on them, which I treasured as souvenirs. And so, I had to forego the water. Others, however, bought it and bread too, at the price of 500 zlotys for one kilogram of rye bread.

Until noon I suffered greatly from thirst. Then a German, who subsequently became the "Hauptsturmfuehrer," entered our car and picked out ten men to bring water for us all. At last I was able to quench my thirst to some extent. An order came to remove the dead bodies. If there were any, but there were none.

At 4 P.M. the train got under way again and, within a few minutes, we came into the Treblinka Camp. Only on arriving there did the horrible truth dawn on us. The camp yard was littered with corpses, some still in their clothes and some naked. Their faces distorted with fright and awe, black and swollen, the eyes wide open, with protruding tongues, skulls crushed, bodies mangled. And, blood everywhere, the blood of our children, of our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers.

Helpless, we felt intuitively that we would not escape our destiny and would also fall victims to our executioners.

Due to the passing train, what this man is describing cannot be the Siedlce line to Malkinia. It begs the question where that other train was going to.

[bombsaway]

Maybe they were going around the loop. Maybe his memory was fuzzy. This is the issue with making assertions based on speculation rather than direct evidence.

[PrudentRegret]

Nonsense there is evidence of people stating they transited to Birkenau from the Malkinia transit camp.

I believed so too, but Nick shed some light on that evidence and I don't think it's very strong. The evidence is they were transited in from somewhere else.

No? Nick Terry just said "by the time the MS hints at a camp, Lewental has arrived at Birkenau (noting for example that some were taken to Auschwitz i.e. main camp evidently after selection)" which doesn't mean anything at all. Terry also confirmed that Lewental's transport transited through Malkinia. So Lewental said he went through Malkinia and he did.

There's also reports of the construction of a transit camp in the Ringelbaum Archive. Terry calls it an "informal transit camp" but if structures were built to shelter settlers then it was a formal transit camp.

[bombsaway]

Nonsense there is evidence of people stating they transited to Birkenau from the Malkinia transit camp.

I believed so too, but Nick shed some light on that evidence and I don't think it's very strong. The evidence is they were transited in from somewhere else.

No? Nick Terry just said "by the time the MS hints at a camp, Lewental has arrived at Birkenau (noting for example that some were taken to Auschwitz i.e. main camp evidently after selection)" which doesn't mean anything at all. Terry also confirmed that Lewental's transport transited through Malkinia. So Lewental said he went through Malkinia and he did.

There's also reports of the construction of a transit camp in the Ringelbaum Archive. Terry calls it an "informal transit camp" but if structures were built to shelter settlers then it was a formal transit camp.

Here's the full quote by Terry

1) Danuta Czech's Kalendarium, which relied on Salmen Lewental's Birkenau Sonderkommando manuscript. Lewental was deported from the Zichenau district and the transport stopped in Malkinia junction but the manuscript is literally full of holes, i.e. words cannot be made out, and by the time the MS hints at a camp, Lewental has arrived at Birkenau (noting for example that some were taken to Auschwitz i.e. main camp evidently after selection). It's not a source for the existence of a transit camp at Malkinia in December 1942; it's also the *only* source that anyone has hitherto found for even the vague possibility of one, while Czech's interpretation ignores how Lewental's transport did not originate in Malkinia but from one of the ghettos in the Zichenau district.

I need to see the manuscript to verify all of this, can't find it. I don't want to rely on secondary sources like the Kalendarium. Do you have it?

Terry doesn't call the camp "informal", his source does, and it predates Reinhardt, and German occupation. A camp existing in 39-40 under the Soviets isn't evidence it existed in 41-42 under the Germans.

So my evidentiary threshold hasn't been met yet. This is a good example of the different standards we apply to history, in my mind yours is highly speculative which opens the doors to human bias. Bias is unavoidable, but if we stick to direct evidence I think the history will be more accurate. It's a methodological difference between us.

I'm not saying the camp didn't exist, I'm saying the evidence isn't there to make me believe it did.

[PrudentRegret]

You said the "evidence was they were transited through somewhere else" when in reality Terry confirmed he was transited through Malkinia. You can go on about your "threshold for evidence" which seems to be very flexible, but what you said is wrong. Terry acknowledged that the evidence is he was indeed transited through where he said he was. Terry implies he could have been describing a camp at a different part of his journey but that explanation doesn't really hold given there is some other corroboration he transited through where he said.

[bombsaway]

I said transited in "from somewhere else" meaning it didn't originate in Malkinia. It seems like they went through Malkinia so it is accurate to say they were transited through Malkinia, but that doesn't mean they stopped at a camp there.

[SanityCheck]

literally full of holes in the opening pages of Lewental's MS (copied from Amidst a Nightmare of Crime). Beyond the transport from the Zichenau district stopping at Malkinia for an unknown amount of time I don't think anything can realistically be extracted from this to say with certainty that there was a 'transit camp' in Malkinia, contrary to the interpretation of Danuta Czech in the annotations and introduction to the MS. The camps/camp mentioned before Malkinia cannot be said to *be* Malkinia given the holeyness of the surviving text.

[1]
[...] In the course of several years one passed through various phases [...] of persecutions which had afflicted the Jewish population [...] since the beginning of the war in 1939, since the Germans [had occupied the whole country]. Also in our town it was made public that [there would come into being] following the example of all other [towns?] a special quarter for Jews [called Jiidischer Wohnbezirk?].1 Later, when the quarter had been fenced in [with wires] and transformed into the Jewish ghetto, material conditions [considerably] changed for the worse. The only slender means of subsistence became the smuggling run with the Poles from villages. [Whereas] all work establishments were closed. The Germans surrounded the ghetto and forbade the Jews to leave [the precincts of their quarter]. Bad material conditions, confined living space, caused by this system [reduced the Jews], who lived in ghettos, to having to use their own furniture as fuel [...]
[2]
[...] at noon [...] [caused by] various other social [...] the fixed date was put off for Nov [ember] 1, 1942, [...] the deportation was made public [...] which encompassed [also other localities] [...] [such as] Plonsk, Nowy Dwor, Nowe Miasto 2 [...]
[3]
[...] and the day after tomorrow [...] that all [decided?] not [to stir] from the spot [...] put to death, and what will happen [...] was stated [...] together with his f[amily?] already with full [...], that [are going?] our locality [...] when the day of departure came [...] November 17 3 [...] the square [...] children that could not yet walk by themselves
[4]
[...] closed [...] to transport [...] [were] collected later in the night with the help of Jewish policemen [...] They have certainly earned much gratitude for their [work] they served their master so faithfully [...] they are all dead by now, were it otherwise I should myself institute [...] what concerning people [...] led to [...] driven in [...] several hundred people in a carriage [...] hell [...].
[5]
[...] Poles who were there [...] demanded money.4 It is understandable that we did not grudge it. We gave away everything to buy [some water?], but alas [...] in one word they got from us everything [...] he came to [...] alas, no one [...] could help in [the carriage?] [...] the mother with five children perished, only the father was left alive, who wept but without [...] tears.
[6]
[...] it is true [...] he heard that they are leading [...] in this way also [Warsaw?] [Jews] were led [...] from the whole [neighbourhood]. From our neighbourhood were sent to known [camps] [...] unfit, what was [our?] [...] straight into the jaws of death [...] they found themselves in [the transport?] innocent [...] people who [...] we really did not know [a thing?] we did not know about Auschwitz all about [...] labour camp [...] conditions [...] but [...] [about] the camp we meanwhile got to know [...] various [people] just [from the camp], people who had been there for whole months, this [misled?] us all [...] till the last moment in the end [...] they were frightened [...] station Malkinia which [...] no [transport?] was brought [...] [at night?] they passed [...] [as far as] the station Malkinia, where the train stopped [.]
[7]
[...] they were dishonoured [...] with knives [...] naked girls [...] in a dreadful manner [...] clubs were inserted into the lower part of their bodies until [...] they died in terrible pain and suffering [...] older people [...] the sadists dragged forth [...] forced them to rape [...] children [...] also [they?] [...] were taken [...] and wives from their families [...]
[8]
[...] but [...] at five o’clock [...] after several hours of standing [there appeared] [...] SS men with policemen to lead out [...] people were thrown [...]
[9]
[...] who have not {...] simply the sick remained [...] as usual [...] in sight of [...] were thrown into the cloacae [...] people [...] looked at [the departing?] [...] were sent [...] back with [the transport?] to Auschwitz [...] others [...]
[10]
[...] they are standing [...] prisoners [...] SS men who very politely help [weak?] women and children to board the car, one would like to something [...] but at other occasions this politeness [...] they entered [...] completely [...] trace or several times when [...] we [...] it is not possible to recognize [...] the whole [...] innocent Jewish victims [...] they unloaded people [...]
[11]
[...] they were shot [...] it was hard to imagine what [...] they were cremated [...] among us [...] are with those [who] were led [...] we were led to the block19 [...] next day [...] one was taken ii [...]

at some point by p.11 Lewental is describing Auschwitz-Birkenau. He later revisits the selection on arrival and is clear on the date (December 10). The MS is better preserved later on and other Sonderkommando manuscripts such as Gradowski's have far fewer holes from illegibility.

[SanityCheck]

I said transited in "from somewhere else" meaning it didn't originate in Malkinia. It seems like they went through Malkinia so it is accurate to say they were transited through Malkinia, but that doesn't mean they stopped at a camp there.

Precisely.

One further problem with taking Danuta Czech's interpretation at face value is there were other survivors from this transport originating in Mlawa, which was a collection ghetto including Ciechanow, Makow Mazowiecki and other towns in the Zichenau district.

Mordechai Ciechanower also arrived and was registered on 10 December 1942 from a Zichenau-Mlawa transport, and mentions nothing about a stopover in Malkinia in any kind of camp. That is a later memoir, but nobody was much fussed about Czech's 'Malkinia' misinterpretation until very recently (Dominic Williams, co-author of a study of the Sonderkommando manuscripts with Nicholas Chare, rolls his eyes at the misinterpretation). Besides, Arie Fuks testified at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial and likewise did not mention a stopover, although his prisoner registration number is in the same block as Lewental's transport. That was in 1964, before Amidst a Nightmare of Crime even appeared in its German version, and when Czech's Kalendarium articles were only just appearing.

An earlier transport from Mlawa arrived December 6, 1942 at Auschwitz, from which the Dragon brothers and Milton Buki were selected for the Sonderkommando. Again no reference to a stopover that I am aware of.

[PrudentRegret]

One of the most important points Terry handwaves is that we know the trains stopped in Malkinia for ~20 minutes. It seem there is no evidence at all for Transports going direct to Treblinka Station even though the mainstream has no explanation for why the train would stop at all in Malkinia except to do something.

You can say with a very high degree of certainty that nobody got off a train at a place where it didn't stop. But if a train stopped at a place, then people getting off the train is a very distinct possibility- to put it lightly. The only reason we are supposed to be certain that nobody got off the train when it stopped at the Malkinia Junction is because of witness testimony for a very weird shunting operation of hundreds of thousands of people to a camp 7km away, an operation which is not supported by a shred of documentary evidence.

[Nazgul]

One of the most important points Terry handwaves is that we know the trains stopped in Malkinia for ~20 minutes. It seem there is no evidence at all for Transports going direct to Treblinka Station even though the mainstream has no explanation for why the train would stop at all in Malkinia except to do something.

There are only four Fahrplananordnung (Fplo) that seem to be available: There were two routes to Treblinka as this was located on the Malkinia-Siedlce trunk line.

These are:

• Fplo 548 Warsaw-Malkinia-Treblinka. Same return trip

• Fplo 565 Lukow-Siedlce-Treblinka Same return trip

• Fplo 567 Częstochowa / Tschenstochau - Warsaw- Malkinia -Treblinka Return plan unknown

• Fplo 587 Szydłowiec -Siedlce -Treblinka - Return Treblinka - Siedlce-Bakowiec-Kozienice

One of the transports of interest is Fplo 567 from Tschenstochau to Treblinka via the Malkinia junction, reproduced here for convenience.


Here are the stops:
Tschenstochau..stopped 88 mins
Petrikau...stopped 24 mins
Skierniewice...stopped 15 mins
Pruszkow...stopped 24 mins
Warsaw x3...stopped 26 mins
Rembertow...stopped 4 mins
Tluscz...stopped 2 mins
Malkinia...stopped 27 mins
Treblinka..arrived 6.20 am

This is a long journey short stops needed for water and coal, perhaps a change of driver and fireman as is necessary. The labour camps for Jews were at the starting point (Częstochowa / Tschenstochau ) which had 7 camps for Jews in munitions. There were camps in Pruszkow, Warsaw, Malkinia and of course Treblinka.

There are also major stops at site of railway junctions. where people could be put on another transport to other Jewish Labour Camps. All of the Fplo documentation in existence speak a similar story.

[SanityCheck]

One of the most important points Terry handwaves is that we know the trains stopped in Malkinia for ~20 minutes. It seem there is no evidence at all for Transports going direct to Treblinka Station even though the mainstream has no explanation for why the train would stop at all in Malkinia except to do something.

You can say with a very high degree of certainty that nobody got off a train at a place where it didn't stop. But if a train stopped at a place, then people getting off the train is a very distinct possibility- to put it lightly. The only reason we are supposed to be certain that nobody got off the train when it stopped at the Malkinia Junction is because of witness testimony for a very weird shunting operation of hundreds of thousands of people to a camp 7km away, an operation which is not supported by a shred of documentary evidence.

Not supported by documentary evidence, like Ganzenmueller-Wolff, the Hoefle telegram, Stroop report, the Fahrplananordnungen, the report of Ortskommandantur Ostrow to the Wehrmacht in the GG, as well as numerous contemporary Polish underground reports (which are still documentary evidence)?

These documents indicate the direction of extremely large numbers of deportees to a place called Treblinka (as well as their deaths since the Ortskommandantur Ostrow report complains of the smell emanating from the place).

The micro-detail of how this unfolded between Malkinia and Treblinka does not need to be documented to your unreasonable levels of precision, since the elephant in the room is all the documents mentioned point to Treblinka II, as the only alternative was Treblinka I if we're discussing *anything* to do with Treblinka, and this is not confirmed by other sources to the scale indicated in the other documents, while the eyewitness testimonies from both camps point to Treblinka II as the prime destination, and also provide enough descriptions of the arrivals, which must be divided also between moments of backlog and smoother transports, to achieve agreement on how the arrivals were shunted and unloaded.

Versus a holey manuscript mentioning a stop at Malkinia, in keeping with other eyewitness accounts from survivors of Treblinka I and II?

There's no documentary evidence, German or Polish, for a 'transit camp' at Malkinia. There is also no eyewitness evidence for such a camp in 1942.

The same goes for onward transport in 1942: no documents about the transits, nor any about arrivals at an end destination, nor any testimonies at any stage.

One merely finds some testimonies in 1943 noting selections on sporadic occasions, such as the Warsaw-Treblinka transports in the uprising, some of which were selected and inmates sent on to Majdanek - as is then documented at the Majdanek end.

The only other 'releases' from the direction of the deportees towards Treblinka II in 1942 that are recorded are a few selections for the Treblinka I labour camp, a diary noting the unloading of corpses en route at a station far from Malkinia, and various reports of break outs which either succeeded (a small number did then survive) or ended in death as train guards shot the escapees down, becoming quite dramatic with some transports in between Malkinia and Treblinka II by some eyewitness accounts.

There are no eyewitness testimonies, contemporary reports or other sources noting the offloading of deportees in labour camps en route, contrary to Nazgul and Callafangers' claims.

[Nazgul]

There are no eyewitness testimonies, contemporary reports or other sources noting the offloading of deportees in labour camps en route, contrary to Nazgul and Callafangers' claims.

This is not true. Fplo documents are standard for all rail transport.

After three months, Cohen was transferred to the Skarzysko-Kamienna labor camp (from Majdanek), southwest of Lublin. Sobibor Survivors

Note that Skarzysko is mentioned in the Fplo below. All Jews arrived at these camps by train, an Fplo or schedule for each transport. If the food doctors thinks that Alex Cohen got from Sobibor to Lublin to Skarz-Kam by another method apart from train then he is welcome to present it. Note the stopping time at this location: 1 hr 2 mins

[SanityCheck]

There are only four Fahrplananordnung (Fplo) that seem to be available:

There are more than this - nine Fahrplananordungen were saved by Zabecki, one documenting a shuttling transport, and maybe one more

Fahrplananordnung Nr 548: 1 daily transport from Warsaw to Treblinka, 6.8.42 onwards
Fahrplananordnung Nr 562: 2 transports from Międzyrzec Podlaski ‘mit Arbeitern’ on 25-26.8.42
Fahrplananordnung Nr 565: 1 transport from Lukow, 28.8.42
Fahrplananordnung Nr 566: 1 transport from Wloszowa, 1.9.42
Fahrplananordnung Nr 587: 1 transport from Sedziszow, 21.9.42
Fahrplananordnung Nr 587: 1 transport from Szydlowiec, 23.9.42 (same train)
Fahrplananordnung Nr 587: 1 transport from Szydlowiec, 25.9.42 (same train)
Fahrplananordnung Nr 587: 1 transport from Kozienice, 23.9.42 (same train)
Fahrplananordnung Nr 592: 1 transport from Lochow, 24.9.42
Fahrplananordnung Nr 594: 6 transports from Tschenstochau on 22, 25, 28 Sept and 1, 4, 7 Oct

Fahrplananordnung Nr 552: 5 transports from Białystok, 1 transport from Grodno, 9-14.2.43
Fahrplananordnung Nr 290: 3 transports from Białystok on 21-23.8.43

These from the original files in the Ludwig Fischer NTN trial