The Revisionist Fabrication of the Myth of an Original Treblinka "Steam Narrative"

Seidman’s interview of Rabinowicz in early September records significantly richer and some different details to the notes made by Lewin on conversations with Rabinowicz later that month.

In his two relevant diary entries^[29], Lewin records that Rabinowicz spoke about a sign at Treblinka “greeting” arriving Jews, the “Graves for the Führer” at Treblinka, how the “women go naked into the bath-house,” learning that “Everyone without exception is exterminated,” and the method of murder being “simple vapour (steam).”^[30] We can conclude from Lewin that he heard the following, with Hersh and Bluma Wasser, directly from Rabinowicz, on 27 September: “‘Graves for the Führer.’ The women go naked into the bath-house. The condition of the dead bodies. What are they killing them with? With simple vapour (steam)^[31]. Death comes after seven or eight minutes. On their arrival they take away the shoes of the unfortunates.” Again, Lewin recorded the existence of a proclamation greeting the arriving Jews.

In contrast, while Seidman’s report covered the general extermination of deportees and the disrobing of victims before being taken to a shower-building to be murdered, it differed to Lewin’s report in crucial ways. For one thing, it focused on transport to the camp as much as what happened in Treblinka. Differing to what Lewin recorded, what Rabinowicz told Seidman included the duration of his time in Treblinka (a part of a day) and his conscription (as a clothes sorter). Seidman’s account, on the other hand, had no reference at all to graves in which victims were buried; did not mention the condition of the corpses; and lacked any estimate of the time it took victims to die in the death chambers. Finally, Rabinowicz told Seidman that he was informed by workers at Treblinka that the killing was by means of gas (saying this twice; although his knowledge was hearsay, Rabinowicz understood that the victims at Treblinka were murdered by gas); Lewin heard from Rabinowicz that “simple vapour (steam)” was used to kill.

Unfortunately, Lewin’s notes are very brief and provide much less detail on the topics mentioned. For example, Rabinowicz told Seidman how he learned about the killing method (from a Polish worker who, we can infer, in turn heard from someone else); there is no such explanation in Lewin’s account. Nor does Lewin’s account say how Rabinowicz escaped. It is possible that by late September, when Rabinowicz met with Lewin and the Wassers, Rabinowicz's guesses about the murder method had begun to reflect discussions about this question taking place in Warsaw –  thus the two reports diverged on this score.

This and other differences in the two reports are not so great as to suggest two different “authors.” On some points, there is good congruence; the Seidman report has, as we’ve seen, more detail and significantly more material on the deportations and Rabinowicz’s escape; Lewin’s entry focuses more on conditions in the camp, which may well be due to the questions asked (the Wassers and Lewin’s were skilled questioners of escapees by this point, Lewin alone interviewing at least 4 escapees from Treblinka during August and September). This shift in focus may also be due to the fact that when Seidman interviewed Rabinowicz, the deportations were ongoing and the destination of them just being learned, whereas by late September, when Lewin met with Rabinowicz, the Great Deportation had wrapped up and Treblinka was understood as the destination of the transports – thus putting more focus on what was going on inside Treblinka.

That Lewin and Seidman were referring to the same “Rabinowicz” seems assured. Lewin described the escapee as “Rabinowicz . . . , a relative of Rabinowicz’s”^[32]; similarly, Seidman identified his interlocutor as “Yaakov Rabinowicz, the Parczewer Rebbe’s son and the brother of the young Munkatcher Rebbe." He is a “yeshiva-man, about 25 years old, and a member of the religious organization Haboneh in Warsaw.”^[33] It appears that Seidman had known Rabinowicz better than did Lewin, for example, Seidman giving his street address, religious affiliation, and richer detail on his family connections.

Another contemporaneous reference to Rabinowicz comes from Ringelblum’s notebooks.^[34] Ringelblum’s notes on Rabinowicz are even briefer than Lewin’s. He wrote, “Treblinki – The news about the grave-diggers (Rabinowicz, Jacob), the Jews from Stok who escaped from the wagons . . . loaded with gold and foreign currency – the unanimous description of the ‘bath,’ the Jewish gravediggers with yellow patches on their knees. – The method of killing: gas, steam, electricity.” To this Ringelblum added, probably referring to Frydrych’s mission on behalf of the Bund, “The news about Treblinki brought back by the investigations sent out by the families of those deported there.” He then discussed what had been heard about tractors being used to bury corpses or to “plow under the ashes of the burned Jews.” The brief comment on Rabinowicz could indicate that he’d brought news about gravediggers at the camp – echoing what Lewin recorded about graves and corpses.

With no more than these brief, suggestive traces of Rabinowicz’s deportation and time in Treblinka,^[35] we do not have rich detail, from a wide number of sources, on his experiences. What seems certain, however, is that in mid- to late August Rabinowicz was deported from the OBW workshop to Treblinka where he spent a short time, perhaps less than a day, was put to work, and observed portions of the arrival and extermination process and was told about the murder of arriving Jews. He did not observe the gassing process or the upper camp first-hand. While at the camp, however, Rabinowicz heard about the mass murder of the Jews taken to the camp, and probably other details about the camp. Rabinowicz said he was told that the killings took place in a large building said to be a shower (or bathhouse) and were accomplished by gas (Seidman’s account) or some sort of steam vapor (Lewin’s diary).

Thus, by early September, at least one member of Oyneg Shabes had recorded testimony from Rabinowicz that gas was used to kill all Jews taken from Warsaw to Treblinka^[36] and by the end of the month another member of Oyneg Shabes had recorded an account that differed to the earlier account in some particulars but reiterated that the people taken to Treblinka were being murdered in a bathhouse.

We also know about other information, in addition to the Bund report and Rabinowicz’s account, coming back to Warsaw activists in August and September. About this time, Samuel Puterman recorded an escapee’s telling him about the murders at Treblinka, “The doors are open; everyone goes calmly inside; when the building is full they close the doors and instead of water turn on the gas. It lasts thirteen to twenty minutes.“^[37] Another Oyneg Shabes activist Menachem Mendel Kon, had written already on 6 August that transport from Warsaw was “for extermination in a place called Treblinka.” On 7 September, five days after Rabinowicz spoke to Seidman, Kon noted that "Thousands of our brethren at the brush factory have been shipped away to camp, where they entered the gas chambers the same day.”^[38] Rabinowicz’s report is part of this flow of “communication” by which Warsaw’s Jews were fitting pieces of a difficult, and life-or-death, puzzle together. As Kon wrote on 1 October, summarizing, “between six and eight thousand were being killed there daily, the bodies thrown into pits dug by machines to the depth of 30 meters . . . some grave-workers escaped . . . and reported to us, the survivors, details of the "action" [in which victims were told that they] are to go to a bath after they take off their clothes. With cynical speeches they drive in some six to eight thousand people into the gas chambers, where they are dead in 5 or 6 minutes and, swollen, are being thrown into the pits.”

And, last, we can assume, reasonably, as well, that more details related by Rabinowicz than appeared in Lewin's diary in late September were used in the Oyneg Shabes’s November report on the deportations from Warsaw and death camp Treblinka. This report will be a key topic in part B of this comment, which focuses on Krzepicki.

What we see here, then, is not a "steam" narrative being developed but initial reports which activists tried desperately to understand with a main focus on extermination of deportees and what fate Jews left in Warsaw were to expect. As far as the method of murder, Frydrych heard by gassing (or electrical current); Rabinowicz is recorded, based on hearsay, having said by gas and by steam; Kon wrote, in gas chambers as did Puterman’s unnamed escapee; Ringelblum, who headed up the Oyneg Shabes, concluded simply, “The method of killing: gas, steam, electricity.”^[39]


[39] See footnote 34 above.