Postwar Poland Hid Jewishness of Deaths Myth Debunked Chrostowski

Extermination Camp Treblinka, by Witold Chrostowski. 2004

Hiding Jewish Deaths Myth. The Polish Underground (ARMIA KRAJOWA) Helped the Jewish Escapees After the Treblinka Revolt

Chrostowski’s work is a concise overview of the planning, construction, and modus operandi of the Treblinka death camp. An extensive bibliography is provided for further reading.

THE HIDING JEWISH DEATHS MYTH DEBUNKED

The number of victims of this death factory can only be estimated, because the Germans had destroyed all of the relevant records. Estimates range from 700,000 to 3 million (p. 101). In recent years, it has been insinuated that the higher death toll cited (also for Auschwitz-Birkenau) was motivated by the Poles’ desire to hide the Jewishness of most of the victims by “padding” the total with millions of nonexistent Polish-gentile deaths. The nonsensical nature of this argument is shown by the fact that the above-cited grossly-exaggerated 3 million Treblinka death toll estimate comes from Grosman, a Jew, who made this estimate immediately after the war (p. 105).

UNAPPRECIATED POLISH HELP TO THE TREBLINKA ESCAPEES

One unique feature of this book is discussion of the seldom-mentioned aid, by the Polish Underground guerillas (AK), to the Jews who had fled Treblinka after their heroic revolt: “A large group of the freed Jews went into the forests and crossed the River Bug in the vicinity of Glina village. As it turned out they were covered and helped during the crossing by an AK detachment under the command of Stanislaw Siwek, whose pseudonym was Sliwa.” (p. 92).