Search JTA's historical archive dating back to 1923

Germans Raze All Traces of the “jewish Extermination Camps” Before Leaving Poland

August 17, 1944
See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date
Advertisement

Correspondents of the Moscow press now visiting the liberated area in Poland today reported from Lublin that the Germans have razed to the ground all buildings in the extermination camp of Treblinka, including the gas chambers where tens of thousands of Jews were suffocated to death. The Moscow papers, however, assert that there are people who survived the massacres in Treblinka and who testify in details as to the mass-murder which the Germans carried out systematically on Jews brought from all parts of occupied Europe.

Similar steps to remove all traces of their crimes have been taken by the Germans in the Sobibor, Trawniki, Poniatow and Majdanek. All these places are now in the hands of the Red Army, but it is not easy to find the exact location of the “death factories.”

An investigation made by Soviet officials in the Lublin district established that in the Trawniki concentration camp the Germans had established a special section for Jews who were caught fleeing from the Warsaw ghetto after the anti-Nazi revolt there. The torture of the Jews in this section of the camp was especially brutal, neighboring peasants testified.

Recommended from JTA

Advertisement