Treblinka

Rating:
Summary: History of Inhumanity and Hope in the Face of Utter Evil
Review: "Treblinka" is a powerful novel and a story of things that the Nazis wanted the world to never know. The novel spares nothing in the telling: every gruesome beating, coldhearted murder, inhuman cruelty is captured in shocking detail. I wanted to shed tears as I read this novel. There were so many poignant moments that made me breathless and contemplative of such a world.

However, in the face of the Holocaust (Shoah) the real treasure are how these human slaves kept their humanity... making jokes in the face of genocide. One might think that it would be impossible to laugh when people are being thrown into ovens and turned into consumer goods for the Third Reich (human hair for pillows, rendering people into soap, some things even worse), but the downtrodden victims of Treblinka never gave up. They kept faith in life and living life (not just surviving) in the face of the most horrible death.

I read about some of the humor of these condemned and it is a miracle in and of itself (Pg.238 "Treblinka," 1967 Simon and Shuster Hardcover Edition):

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"Earlier, at the end of the ghetto period, when the best will in the world it had become impossible to preserve the slightest hope, some Jews had taken refuge in humor. The essential metaphysical question had become: "Do you believe in life after the trains?" The standard consolation to friends to whom you had to leave and whose sadness could be read on their faces had become, ""Come on, cheer up, old man, we'll meet again some day in a better world - in a shop window as soap." If the friend was in the know, he was supposed to reply, "Yes, but while from my fat they'll make toilet soap, you'll be a bar of cheap laundry soap."

"To understand this humor is to understand the infinite love of life of the Jews. It is to understand both the abdication and the miracle."

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The book also functions as a history of how the "death camp" evolved in the Baltics from gun killings to Xyklon-B (poison gas) vans to the concentration camps that the Holocaust is better known for. Particularly discussed are the machinations of the SS and the "Technicians" to dehumanize the Jews and not only make them captives and victims, but willing accomplices in the process of committing genocide. The novel examines what it means to live while everyone around you dies (often including one's own family and children). The moral burden of such a situation is even difficult to just ponder yet alone have to survive.

Another function of the novel is to disprove the myth of the concentration camp Jew as a meek helpless being to be pitied. The surviving Jews at Treblinka did stage a revolt and out of the eight hundred Jews (themselves the survivors of around eight-hundred-thousand Jews that the Nazis "processed" at the Treblinka) that the Nazis kept as menial labor at Treblinka, forty survived the war. Their testimonies in addition to the few books written about the subject after the war form the bulk of the research sources of "Treblinka."

Sometimes this book is criticized for being "fiction" since it isn't referenced like as academic tome (footnotes, bibliography, etc.), but the author is careful to explain in her introduction and the conclusion that apart from the survivors' testimonies and what little physical evidence could be found, there was little concrete evidence to be had. The Nazis were careful to destroy written records and even incinerated the bodies of their victims in an effort to hide this atrocity. I found the story to be very convincing and don't doubt the author's writing one iota.

Probably the biggest reason to read "Treblinka" is that it's so very readable. Reading about the Holocaust can be an emotionally taxing task, but thanks to the author's easy-to-read and captivating style as well as a focus on the hope that sustained the survivors of Treblinka, "Treblinka" is an easy and enjoyable read. Out of all the novels that I've read about the Holocaust I've read, I would now recommend "Treblinka" to start a study of the Holocaust. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: In depth writing on Treblinka, but loose on fact...
Review: ...Steiner brings it all out, all aspects including actual Aryans falling for their own tricks and being sent there, only to be executed because of fear that the secret of "extermination" might be brought public. Well, we all know the truth now.

Steiner gives us good insight into the lives of not only the prisoners themselves, but also the camp Kapos and guards. One of the main characters, Galewski, is the head Kapo for most of the book, and he is humanized despite the fact he beats and assists in the murder of his own Jewish people, along with his Kapo comrade Kurland, who runs the "Hospital", where people are supposedly given medicine shots that really kill them.

Also, info into the exploits of Nazi poster 'Children of hypocrisy' such as Max Bielas and the table waiter turned mass murderer Kurt Franz are told.

The only thing I found questionable about this book was the lack of info on a scale of overall proven fact. The infamous Franz Stangl has no major bearing on the book, which I found odd, since the Nuremburg Trials has him listed big time. Also, the book paints this sadistic picture of Kurt Franz, yet he was one of the few who wasn't sentenced to death for his SS activities.

Either way, I've never read a more in depth book on Treblinka. Can't lose on this one.

Rating:
Summary: An overpowering work. This book puts you inside the camp.
Review: A chance meeting with a university professor in NY years ago caused me to ask the question of what was it really, really like to exist in a place of complete insanity; where you were placed at risk of death at every moment, where every act, every gesture could be your last. What sort of social structure could possibly evolve in such indescrible conditions where inmate sometimes turned on inmate for a crust of bread. And yet in this dark chaos an order did evolve. The inmates organized themselves to such an extent that they ultimately rose up in rebellion, overpowering their opressors and a small number actually escaped.

I have read numerous books on the Holocaust but none of those prepared me for Steiner's superb work. Many of the works I've read concerned Auschwitz. Frankly, I never focused on Treblinka. As there is a relatively large number of Auschwitz survivors, I suspect scholars tend to focus on them. As far as Treblinka survivors go... there were only 75. Steiner's descriptions are so overwhelming; his imagery so clear and lucid that you can see in your own mind, the acts of brutality and barbarism, as well as small acts of kindness as if you are actually there. I found myself cringing at the blows of the clubs and the slash of the whips. And yet he takes pains to describe acts of heroism one can hardly imagine. You see how exposure to this inhumanity affects the inmates. Some degenerate while others work at mostly futile individual escape attempts in order to warn the remaining Jews of what ultimately lies in wait at the railhead at Treblinka Station.

This is strong stuff and is not for everyone. This is not a book that compiles statistics but rather paints a searing description of day-to-day life with the inmates, their struggles to make it another day, their planning and finally their courageous attempt to escape.

If you make it through this book, read Kogon's "The Theory and Practice of Hell" and then the next time you see "ethnic cleansing" taking place in some remote venue such as the Balkans, Rawanda or Timor ask yourself just how far we've really come and how easily we've learned to mouth the words "never again".

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I bought this book for a research paper I had to do for a composition class and I ended up reading the entire thing because of how good the book was. It is excellently written and tells the story of what happened inside the concentration camps without getting technical or making it simple. The book is truely inspiring and is one that everybody should read.

Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read on the Shoah
Review: I don't need to go into detail about how moving this book is. Other reviewers have already done that, and have done a better job than I could hope to.

Instead, I want to emphasize what makes this particular book important. One of the earlier reviewers pointed out how this book explained the history, the mentality of the European Jewry, and why the Nazis were able to put them into camps relatively easily. The second aspect of this book that is vital to understanding the holocaust is that Steiner also shows how the death camps were developed: How the Germans resolved the technical and psychological problems connected with mass extermination. For example, an early version of the gas chamber involved trucks, with the exhaust directed to a contained hold. A driver just had to drive to a set destination, and on arrival, all the people in the back would be dead. This "clever" plan failed, because the drivers couldn't stand what they were doing: they all drove too fast, and the prisoners did not have time to suffocate. But from that first concept, the idea of the death chamber came to be.

For people today, who weren't there, you need to read this book to appreciate what was involved in this unprecedented mass destruction, all with 1930s technology.

Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read on the Shoah
Review: I don't need to go into detail about how moving this book is. Other reviewers have already done that, and have done a better job than I could hope to.

Instead, I want to emphasize what makes this particular book important. One of the earlier reviewers pointed out how this book explained the history, the mentality of the European Jewry, and why the Nazis were able to put them into camps relatively easily. The second aspect of this book that is vital to understanding the holocaust is that Steiner also shows how the death camps were developed: How the Germans resolved the technical and psychological problems connected with mass extermination. For example, an early version of the gas chamber involved trucks, with the exhaust directed to a contained hold. A driver just had to drive to a set destination, and on arrival, all the people in the back would be dead. This "clever" plan failed, because the drivers couldn't stand what they were doing: they all drove too fast, and the prisoners did not have time to suffocate. But from that first concept, the idea of the death chamber came to be.

For people today, who weren't there, you need to read this book to appreciate what was involved in this unprecedented mass destruction, all with 1930s technology.

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, thought-provoking, important book.
Review: I have a morbid facsination with the Holocaust and Holocaust literature so I picked up Treblinka. I was not prepared for what was in it, how it would make me feel. I couldn't put it down. For two days I lived and breathed Treblinka, for two days I was beaten, starved, tortured, I saw my family gassed, I saw my fellow inmates hang themselves because death was better than this hell on earth. For two days I was an inmate of Treblinka because Jean-Francois Steiner put me there. Treblinka is quite possibly the most important piece of Holocaust literature ever written. It is non-fiction but it reads like a novel. It told me more about the death camps and Nazi regime than all of the books I have read combined. The most amazing thing about Treblinka though was the psychology behind it all. It gave answer to my question: Why did they not revolt before this? Why did they simply allow themselves to be led to death? On the third day I rose from the bottom of the abyss, I revolted, I left Treblinka along with 700 Jews, survivors of hell. I left but I didn't escape, no one escapes Treblinka. Like how Treblinka will always hold it's prisoners, Treblinka will always hold it's readers in it's mental grasp.

Rating:
Summary: If you only read 2 books, this must be one of them
Review: I read Treblinka in 3 different languages, the most recent in Portuguese. I read it for the first time in Spanish when I was 12 and later in English when I moved to Canada.

In Treblinka all evil gathered.

This is a majestic piece of literature, quasi-historic, If you care to look at perhaps one of the most important events in the history of humankind. Never mind that it contains some reputed historic inaccuracies, Steiner does a genuine job at recreating every moment with sincerity. He's not looking at changing history, his impetus is to relay an important message.

Treblinka is the true manifestation of evil. Man at its worst, relishing pleasure at the expense and suffering of other men.

The book is not really about the camps, despite its obvious content. The history is about an age-old struggle, the struggle between good and evil.

If that's a concept that perhaps you have not yet understood, consider yourselves lucky.

Treblinka leaves many questions. How could man behave with such great cruelty and disregard for the lives of others.

You are in the trains, in the barracks, in the divinding lines marching towards the "showers."

You are a son, a mother, a doctor, a girl undressing for the first time in front of your executioners and your friends. Your human dignity is deprived since the ghetto, and it is never recovered not even in death, as the pliers and scissors continue their work on your life-less corpse.

I cried many times during several passages of the book, and I prayed for those people who suffered an astonishing fate. Their destiny in life and death surpasses all notions that can be contemplated by modern human beings, especially the western civilization.

Today, when I look at my terrible situation, all I have to say is: Treblinka! Remember Treblinka. I can always comeback and fight, even in the heart of the worst situations.

Treblinka leads towards the understanding of suffering, evil, and God.

Adhering to hope and God, in the face of evil, Treblinka is a message that must be understood. Hopefully that will be your case as it was mine...

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: I've been reading about the Holocaust for quite some time, but this is the first book that really delves into the psychology of why Jews "behaved" the way they did. Based on the survivors' stories, this book places the reader in the experiences of those tortured men who survived to tell their stories. Definately a must read!

Rating:
Summary: The Will to Survive
Review: Much has been written about the Holocaust. Numerous books exist about Hitler, the Jews, the SS, and the concentration camps. Yet "Treblinka" by Jean-Francois Steiner sets itself apart from all the others, by actually placing the reader inside the horrors of the concentration camp. The camp at Treblinka was to become a model for the great death factories, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Yet, in 1943, the prisoners of Treblinka were able to mount a successful revolt and burn the death camp to the ground.

Steiner begins his narrative with a look at life in the ghetto. One of the questions that has plagued writters of the Holocaust, is how the Jews seemed to willingly accept their death as their fate. Steiner lays out the webwork of the Nazi Technicians, who manipulated the Jews' submissive nature by making them second guess and question every advantage and disadvantage. The Jews accepted death, but they honored life. Despite all of their sufferings, the prisoners of Treblinka were able to revolt against a vicious enemy and escape their nightmare lives. They knew that hardly anyone in the outside world would believe their tales; through various sources, the Jews learned how their stories of the death camps were met with incredulous ears, by Jews and others who refused to accept the truth. Yet when the entire camp of Treblinka faced liquidation (once the exhumed bodies of the more than 700,000 Jews who had been killed were burned) they chose to honor live so that someone could live to tell their story.

"Treblinka" is a powerful read. Of the six-hundred prisoners who escaped the death camp, forty of them survived to bear witness to what they had seen the Germans do to the Jewish people. Steiner has recreated the painful, stifling atmosphere of Treblinka through these accounts, and has taken liberty in recreating conversations to advance the story's narrative. However, this does not detract from the truth at hand. These prisoners faced insurmountable odds and death with every miscalculation. Their actions are extraordinary and beyond measure. Steiner has created a truly magnificent memorial to those who lost their lives, and those who fought to bear witness.