Towards the end of June it turned suffocatingly hot. When graves were opened, steam billowed up from them as if from gigantic boilers. The heat of the grills — together with the monstrous stench — was killing even the workers who were moving the corpses; they were dropping dead on to the bars of the grills.
Billions of overfed flies were crawling along the ground and buzzing about in the air. The last hundred thousand corpses were now being burned.
The uprising was planned for 2 August. It began with a revolver shot. The banner of success fluttered over the holy cause.
New flames soared into the sky — not the heavy flames and grease-laden smoke of burning corpses but bright wild flames of life.
The camp buildings were ablaze, and to the rebels it seemed that a second sun was burning over Treblinka, that the sun had rent its body in two in celebration of the triumph of freedom and honour.
Shots rang out; machine-gun fire crackled from the watchtowers that the rebels had captured. Hand grenades rang out as triumphantly as if they were the bells of truth itself. The air shook from crashes and detonations; buildings collapsed; the buzzing of corpse flies was drowned out by the whistle of bullets. In the pure, clear air flashed axes red with blood. On 2 August the evil blood of the S.S. flowed on to the ground of the Hell that was Treblinka, and a radiant blue sky celebrated the moment of revenge. And a story as old as the world was repeated once more: creatures who had behaved as if they were representatives of a higher race; creatures who had shouted “Achtung! Mützen ab!” to make people take off their hats; creatures who had bellowed, in their masterful voices, “Alle r-r-r-raus unter-r-r-r!”, to compel the inhabitants of Warsaw to leave their homes and walk to their deaths — these conquering beings, so confident of their own might when it had been a matter of slaughtering millions of women and children, turned out to be despicable, cringing reptiles as soon as it came to a life-and-death struggle. They begged for mercy. They lost their heads. They ran this way and that way like rats. They forgot about Treblinka’s diabolically contrived defence system. They forgot about their all-annihilating fire-power. They forgot their own weapons. But need I say more? Need anyone be in the least surprised by these things?
Two and a half months later, on 14 October, 1943, there was an uprising in the Sobibór death factory; it was organized by a Soviet prisoner of war, a political commissar from Rostov by the name of Sashko Pechersky. The same thing happened as in Treblinka: people half dead from hunger managed to get the better of several hundred S.S. beasts who were bloated from the blood of the innocent. With the help of crude axes that they themselves had forged in the camp smithies, the rebels overpowered their executioners. Many of the rebels had no weapon except sand. Pechersky had told them to fill their pockets with fine sand and throw it in the guards’ eyes. But need we be surprised by any of this?
As Treblinka blazed and the rebels, saying a silent farewell to the ashes of their fellows, were escaping through the barbed wire, S.S. and police units were rushed in from all directions to track them down. Hundreds of police dogs were sent after them.
Aeroplanes were summoned. There was fighting in the forests, fighting in the marshes — and few of those who took part in the uprising are still alive. But what does that matter? They died fighting, with guns in their hands.
After 2 August Treblinka ceased to exist. The Germans burned the remaining corpses, dismantled the stone buildings, removed the barbed wire and torched the wooden barracks not already burned down by the rebels. Part of the equipment of the house of death was blown up; part was taken away by train. The grills were destroyed, the excavators taken away, the vast pits filled in with earth. The station building was razed; last of all, the track was dismantled and the sleepers removed. Lupins were sown on the site of the camp, and a settler by the name of Streben built himself a little house there. Now this house has gone; it too was burned down. What were the Germans trying to do? To hide the traces of the murder of millions of people in the Hell that was Treblinka? Did they really imagine this to be possible? Can silence be imposed on thousands of people who have witnessed transports bringing the condemned from every corner of Europe to a place of conveyor-belt execution? Did the Germans really think that they could hide the dead, heavy flames and the smoke that stood in the sky for eight months, visible day and night to the inhabitants of dozens of villages and hamlets? Did they really think that they could force the peasants of Wólka to forget the screams of the women and children — those terrible screams that continued for thirteen months and that ring in their ears to this day? Can the memory of such screams be torn from the heart? Did they really think they could force silence upon the peasants who for a whole year had been transporting human ash from the camp and scattering it on to the roads round about?
Did they really think they could silence the still-living witnesses who had seen the Treblinka executioner’s block in operation from its first days until 2 August, 1943, the last day of its existence?
Witnesses whose descriptions of each S.S. man and each of the Wachmänner precisely corroborate one another? Witnesses whose step-by-step, hour-by-hour accounts of life in Treblinka have made it possible to create a kind of Treblinka diary? It is no longer possible to shout “Mützen ab!” at these witnesses; it is no longer possible to lead them into a gas chamber. And Himmler no longer has any power over his minions. Their heads bowed, their trembling fingers tugging nervously at the hems of their jackets, their voices dull and expressionless, Himmler’s minions are now telling the story of their crimes — a story so unreal that it seems like the product of insanity and delirium. A Soviet officer, wearing the green ribbon of the Defence of Stalingrad medal, takes down page after page of the murderers’ testimonies. At the door stands a sentry, wearing the same green Stalingrad ribbon on his chest.
His lips are pressed tight together and there is a stern look on his gaunt weather-beaten face. This face is the face of justice — the people’s justice. And is it not a remarkable symbol that one of the victorious armies from Stalingrad should have come to Treblinka, near Warsaw? It was not without reason that Himmler began to panic in February 1943; it was not without reason that he flew to Treblinka and gave orders for the construction of the grill pits followed by the obliteration of all traces of the camp. It was not without reason — but it was to no avail. The defenders of Stalingrad have now reached Treblinka; from the Volga to the Vistula turned out to be no distance at all. And now the very earth of Treblinka refuses to be an accomplice to the crimes the monsters committed. It is casting up the bones and belongings of those who were murdered; it is casting up everything that Hitler’s people tried to bury within it.