Talk:Treblinka extermination camp/Archive 2

Getting the article back to FA status
Can always use more help getting the article of this level of importance back to FA status. Especially can use work on references. Ajh1492 (talk) 15:54, 8 June 2011 (UTC)


 * While I think that some of the edits are improvements, I do not like what you have done with the timeline section. It gives the appearance that the events at Treblinka were discrete rather than continuous, and therefore it misrepresents history.  This is not a type of history that can be condensed without distorting it.  Also, some of the "events" are merely operational dates, that is to say, when certain deportation actions began.  I think that the timeline should be viewed in full, which requires the separate article, as was the case previously, with a link to it.Hoops gza (talk) 18:58, 9 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Is this simply an aesthetic objection? I find the table to be particularly useful. It's also, well, maybe not 'standard', in these types of articles but definitely not uncommon.
 * I also think the statement events at Treblinka were discrete rather than continuous, and therefore it misrepresents history. is simply strange. What does that even mean? How does it misrepresent history?Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:36, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Thinking about it a little more, the one thing that I can sort of see being done is replacing some instances in the table which give a particular data ("August 28th") with a range ("Late August"). Would that be "continuous"?Volunteer Marek (talk) 07:43, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The condensed timeline as it appears on this page is merely a selection of singular events from a list of continuous events. I said that it gives the false appearance that events at Treblinka were discrete rather than continuous. It does this by picking and choosing which events to include in a condensed timeline from the more comprehensive timeline as we know it. Therefore it is not a representation of the camp's entire history, as we know it. It distorts history.Hoops gza (talk) 23:58, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, yes, the table, because it presents information concisely, does not list every single continuos second of the camp's existence. Neither does this article for that matter, nor any thing ever written on this or any other subject. It is quite impossible to describe "a list of continuous events". In fact, if I may get a bit pedantic here, asking that a list - which is something which by its nature is discrete - describe "continuous events" is asking for something which is impossible by definition (you can map something discrete (countable) into something continuos (uncountable), but not vice versa ).
 * Ok, now, are there specific events which you feel are being left out of the table? Are there events which you believe do not belong in the table? Specifics please.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:04, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Multiple Reversions
I've restored the summary timeline table back to the article since the consensus of at least two editors is to leave the table. Let's discuss your concerns here on the talk page. Ajh1492 (talk) 12:45, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * On this, I was wondering what people's thoughts would be about including a graph based on the data in the Timeline of Treblinka article of the number of deportees (which was roughly, the number murdered) over time. You can clearly see the the "liquidations" of the various ghettos in the chart, as well as some of the other events. On the other hand I'm bothered a bit by presenting the story in such a detached "cold" manner. Thoughts?Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:34, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Murder vs Killing
Let's discuss use of the terms "murder" vs "killing" here instead of starting a revert war. If we look at the EN:WP definitions. ..
 * Murder - is the unlawful (or immoral) killing of another human being with "malice aforethought", and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide (such as manslaughter).


 * Killing - is the act of causing the death of a living organism.

It is interesting that Killing is a disambiguation page to a number of locations including Murder.

From a NPOV perspective, it WAS the point of Operation Reinhard to liquidate the "undesirable" population in the occupied occupied areas during WW II. The plan itself was "malice aforethought". So use of the term Murder is applicable and NPOV. Ajh1492 (talk) 19:24, 9 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I thought this was actually pretty obvious which is why I reverted the original change.Volunteer Marek (talk) 19:27, 9 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Just trying to engage the IP user in a discussion here. Ajh1492 (talk) 00:58, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

According to Princeton University, the "mass killings" usually involve the use of firearms, especially handguns and rifles, or acts of arson... Meanwhile, a "mass murder", typically occuring in a single location at the same time over a well-defined period of time, usually confounds explanation, because it is committed by individuals appearing to be "insane" in their 'intentionality'. Poeticbent talk 20:42, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Timeline
Why on earth does the timeline need a "day of the week" column? --jpgordon:==( o ) 04:33, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Cremation Pits Referenced
For on reason or another, the "extermination pits" used in Treblinka during it's operation were not well mentioned in this article. Being a holocaust writer and researcher, I had added information and a photo referencing the cremation pits. If there is any trouble with this, please let me know on my discussion page or on here. I wouldn't mind any input regarding this addition.~Folklore777 (talk) 20:56, 10 October, 2011 (UTC)
 * "The bodies were placed on grates and burned in whole within the wood and ash. " not sure what you mean by "within the wood", maybe you could phrase it slightly different? You might also want to check what Criticism_of_Holocaust_denial says about this: "By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel." (I assume fuel refers to the German Brennstoffe). I have remarked on the absurdity of this statement on the talk page over there, but it was archived without any reaction. The preceding paragraph reports eyewitness accounts saying "these grills were operated by burning piles of wood underneath", so why a contradictory statement is used to back this up is beyond me. He seems to be the only witness who ever claimed this. DS Belgium (talk) 13:02, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Confusion
The article mixed up two different terms of "Treblinka I". The forced labour camp "Treblinka I", which existed from 1941 to 1944, was located 2 km south of the extermination camp "Treblinka II". The latter consisted of the "lower camp" (here, misleadingly, called "Treblinka I") and the "upper camp" (death camp; here: "Treblinka II"). --SJuergen (talk) 20:22, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Growing problem with third party reliable sourcing
A lot of new info, added to this article recently, is based on a single PDF file hosted by Ounsdale secondary school, located in Wombourne, England (see Wikipedia article Ounsdale High School). The Google search reveals that some of the new data, originating from that PDF file, cannot be confirmed anywhere else. By the way, the source file uses historical photographs with copyright tags, and it does not reveal the name of its author and his-or-her academic credentials. You're free to browse around. For example, the internet search for the Warsaw branch of "Schmidt und Muenstermann" company, which is listed here as the building contractor of the camp, yields only two troubling results: this Wikipedia article, and the PDF file in question. No more. The HolocaustResearchProject.org in contrast, calls it "Schmidt – Munstermann" (with "an office in Warsaw"). It looks like, the name has been altered at Ounsdale for dramatic reasons. — Pétrarque (talk) 15:22, 19 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I've moved this here from the archive. The use of this source doesn't look acceptable to me. If no one can supply a better source, a lot of this will surely need to be removed or rephrased? BiggerAristotle (talk) 00:09, 23 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It looks like in many cases this source is unnecessary as it double-cites stuff that is already cited to other sources.  Volunteer Marek   03:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Petrol (gasoline) vs. diesel
It is stated that gas in the gas chambers were generated by soviet tanks diesel engines. But new debate over this problem caused by revisionist works points out that petrol (gasoline) engines were used. Diesel engines couldn't produce carbon monoxide in such amount to kill people in limited time in gas chambers. See [http://www.archive.org/stream/BelzecSobiborTreblinka.HolocaustDenialAndOperationReinhard.ACritique/BelzecSobiborTreblinkaHolocaustControversies#page/n9/mode/2up Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues.]. --Whitesachem (talk) 17:15, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

The revisionist hang on some persons stating that diesel engines were used, but you really cannot depend upon casual observers to know the difference, especially when we are talking about large engines. It should also be pointed out that the Soviet BT series of tanks, of which thousands were made, were powered by gasoline engines except for the final series of which only a few hundred were made. Most of those tanks were captured or destroyed early in the war so they would have been easily available in Poland. In fact the Soviets used many of those BT tanks to invade eastern Poland in 1939. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.218.172.148 (talk • contribs) 00:07, 24 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The idea that a diesel engine is unsuitable to such a horrendous task is, like most denier claims, simply untrue. They actually do the job quite well.172.162.1.133 (talk) 02:23, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Not according to the US bureay of Mining - disel engines are safe in mining operations. Gas engines are a no-no. 159.105.80.64 (talk) 18:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Animal zoo
I have read that there was a supposed animal zoo (petting zoo?) kept by the SS at Treblinka. I have not researched this enough to enter it into the article, but perhaps someone else has or would like to look into it.Hoops gza (talk) 23:11, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

A British scholar ( Carole *) is supposed to have made an extensive forensic study of Treblinka. Any info on her results. It was some time ago but I read an article stating that she and her associates were well equiped with the latest in equipment. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.105.80.204 (talk) 19:56, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Here you are - guess what, they found the hard evidencxe that we knew was there. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16657363 Darkmind1970 (talk) 19:32, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

You should read your own sited article. It says no mass graves were found. Thanks for the information. This article still survives as a propaganda piece I see. Gas versus diesel really sounds stupid when they can't find the bodies...... Who/what group finances this dribble? 159.105.81.99 (talk) 16:56, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

stats First paragraph: says that 780,863 and 870,000 men, women and children were murdered at Treblinka, when the vast bulk of the murders took place. Later it reads that at least 900,000 people were established to have been killed in Treblinka. Needs to be cleaned up. Thank youValleyspring (talk) 08:46, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

I just saw a display of the articles that Coll discovered at Treblinka - a cup and a small handful of "not much". It seems she did no digging. Does anyone know if she used any forensic equipment? At the end of WW2 the Poles, I believe, dug around quite a bit and found some "trash" pits but no mass graves. Did Coll confirm their work on the pits - did she search other spots? Thanks 159.105.81.107 (talk) 14:11, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Wholesale 'lifting' of copyrighted article from the internet
Should I consider launching a full-scale WP:COPYVIO investigation? Probably so, Poeticbent talk 15:00, 19 August 2013 (UTC)  The above material (along with the rest of the article... since edited by others) was lifted as a whole, on 12:50, 25 February 2002‎ by : (+14,020 bytes) from © The Nizkor Project webpage (last-modified: 2001/07/05) with a blunt edit summary "(Treblinka. Research Paper by Christopher Mahan)." — All of this must be redacted or promptly removed, unless an OTRS ticket can be produced. Please bear with me a moment!

The user claims that the whole article was (quote): "Posted by the original author to Wikipedia." — There's no proof whatsoever that had anything to do with the original, which does not specify the author as "Christopher Mahan", but mentions the name of one "Professor Smedley" only. Contacting the IP user eleven years after the fact is not only hopeless in my view, but also irrelevant.

207.238.252.18 made his last edit on 14:54, 25 February 2002 by removing text (-2,344)‎ from User:Christopher Mahan ‎which was not reverted, but further edited by blocked User:Chris mahan (98 edits since: 2008). However, Christopher Mahan is an active Wikipedian. Let's see what we can do.

In closing I would like to say also that, whatever the IP user 207.238.252.18 might have said back in 2002, the article copyrighted by the Nizkor Project at the time of its publication in 2001, could not be turned into public domain by Wikipedia, because these two copyright provisions are mutually exclusive (OTRS ticket or not). Poeticbent talk 18:28, 19 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I think authorship is implied by the url - Archive/File: people/m/mahan.christopher/Treblinka - very likely, Smedley was the professor for whom Chris Mahan wrote the article. The problem is that it was published elsewhere first.


 * With the backlog at WP:CP, I am loathe to blank anything we don't have to. It could be blanked for months. I have added the "close paraphrase" tag., or any other regular editors of this page, is there any chance that you can overhaul the article to remove all trace of this content? The duplication detector shows that it is certainly still exhibiting an influence...and that's only copy-pasted content. But the odds are good that those already familiar with the topic can more easily replace the problematic material than those working at WP:CP can. If one of us does it, it'll probably be a much blunter excision. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:10, 20 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Moonriddengirl. Much appreciated. I'm going to try to fix this. Its easy to see what needs to be reworded because all mechanically copy-pasted content from © Nizkor lacks references, which is unacceptable anyways in an article such as this. Poeticbent talk 14:40, 20 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I would think that with the huge interest in WWII topics on WP, that there are authors who could supply referenced copy to replace this. Can you go through the edit history and contact editors who've contributed in the past? This is not an obscure topic that only a few specialists know about. I applaud you for spotting the plagiarism! Liz Let's Talk 16:51, 20 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Mind-boggling, isn't it. An unsigned student assignment – not ever graded by the mentioned teacher missing a given name (that's Christine Smedley) – with references from her recommended reading list, ends up as Wikipedia’s only article on the Treblinka death camp, read by some 600 visitors daily for more than 10 years, and nobody says a word (!). Alas, the purported student of the above Los Angeles Pierce College has every right to consider himself the star attraction in his school that serves more than 23,000 students in the northern Chalk Hills of Woodland Hills within the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles. Congratulations, Poeticbent talk 18:11, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I am the original author of the article. I wrote the paper as a class assignment in 1996. I published it first on my website at http://christophermahan.com/writings/treblinka.html. Later, I contacted the owner of the Nizkor project, asking him to check the article for accuracy. He asked me whether he could archive the article at Nizkor, which I approved. I later submitted this to wikipedia. At the beginning, wikipedia was light on articles, and I was just starting out. I later got my name/ip resolved and got adminship, which I recently (2013) lost for inactivity. For those who doubt my recollections, please see <http://web.archive.org/web/20020202192023/http://www.christophermahan.com/writ/treblinka.html>, which shows the page on my web site from the archive.org from February of 2002. I may also be able to dig out the conversations with the Nizkor owner from that time out of my yahoo account. Hope this helps. Christopher Mahan (talk) 22:15, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. Thanks for chipping in . Just to let you know, all of the matierial from www.nizkor.com has already been removed from this article. <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:darkblue;">Poeticbent</b> <span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:bold;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk 22:30, 15 October 2013 (UTC)


 * That's fine. Christopher Mahan (talk) 22:45, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:B-Class criteria
Article has been checked according to WikiProject article quality grading scheme in the following categories. Thanks, <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:darkblue;">Poeticbent</b> <span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:bold;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk 12:56, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Poland/Assessment (click for more). ✔️
 * WikiProject Military history/Assessment. ✔️
 * WikiProject Death/Assessment. ✔️
 * WikiProject Correction and Detention Facilities. ✔️

Pre-Ga comments
I'll be happy to offer some comments:


 * "Treblinka was the first of five secret extermination camps" and "Thekilling centre at Chełmno (Kulmhof) was established as first" - clear contradiction. The first sentence needs a citation.
 * "The new camp was conveniently placed approximately halfway between some of the largest Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Białystok Ghetto" - needs a cite. The halfway claim is easily supported by the map and I don't see much problem here, but I'd like a source for Warsaw and Białystok being the largest ghettos in Poland. states that the largest ghettos were Warsaw, yes, but then instead of Białystok he names Kraków and Łódź.
 * I have removed "exceptional brutality" claim w/ regards to van Eupen. Yes, it is present in the abstract but I cannot verify it with anything said about Eupen in the Polish text forming the body of the article.
 * I added a number of citation requests
 * some book refs are missing page numbers (ex. "Steiner 1967.")
 * references to long pdf document would benefit from being split into page ranges, just like books
 * my initial review of the first two sections suggests problems with referencing; i.e. one cannot trust that a sentence is referenced unless it has a reference following it; a number of sentences that are not referenced and are followed by a reference sentence later do not seem to be referenced to that source. Please upgrade the article to reference each sentence. --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:52, 3 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Another comment: Treblinka Trials section is misleading; it only covers Stahl. The single ref used there is clearly insufficient, and is missing a page range. --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 08:54, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Piotrus. Much appreciated. I will deal with your individual comments shortly. You know as well as I do, that there has been a long-standing discussion about whether it is necessary to put an anchor behind every single sentence. Contrary to your suggestion, the consensus was that it is an overkill, especially when the citation is already there at the end of the paragraph. Therefore, I will add new citations only at critical points of the narrative. I will also look at the GA for Auschwitz article soon. Thanks.

Treblinka article in the Polish Wiki is not a satisfactory point of comparison for the content of our article, so please don't use it. Huge sections have no citations whatsoever. It would have been unacceptable here: i.e. "Obóz zagłady – Treblinka II" (one citation, three "cn" tags), "Więźniowie i ofiary" (zero citations), etc. <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:darkblue;">Poeticbent</b> <span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:bold;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk 16:04, 3 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I am sorry, but I am not going to review this further if you will not add the requested citations. Not everything has to be referenced, if refs can be trusted, but they cannot be here. I have already noted that the existing refs DO NOT provide citations for claims in the article, yet you have removed my requests for citations, creating a false impression that certain facts or claims are referenced, when in fact they are not. --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 12:52, 4 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Piotr, I'm paying a very close attention to what you did, don't worry, however you have added so many "cn" tags in one sweep (even just a sentence away from the source), it didn't seem reasonable to do it that way, similar to any Tag bombing. I didn't write this article. Let's deal with one problem at a time, shall we? <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:darkblue;">Poeticbent</b> <span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:bold;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk 15:51, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
 * No hurry, but a major problem with this article is that there's unreferenced content intermixed with referenced. It's a mess to clean it up, but it has to be done. If you don't like CN tags, you can just delete it (or I can). I am doing just that (deleting unref claims) in Stephen Báthory right now. Some of them are plausible, but I cannot find them in my sources, so out they go. --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 16:24, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Follow up to 'Resolved comments from AmericanLemming'
Re: GA1 (section) Killing process
 * Quote: "Prisoners arriving from abroad (Theresienstadt, Thrace, Pirot) were treated differently from the Polish Jews" How were they treated differently?'
 * Feedback: Below is a citation from a letter sent on 29th June 1968 by the Czech survivor of the prisoner uprising Richard Glazar to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It explains how the foreign transports differed from the Warsaw deportations. – "Before a transport was admitted from Terezin [in the Czech Republic], all in passenger coaches, these were left standing on a side-line in the forests outside the camp until everything inside had been completely tidied up and prepared for the "journey to the spa". Twenty-four thousand stalwart Bulgarian, Greek and Yugoslav Jews, not suspecting a thing - or perhaps assuming they were being sent to some forced labour camp or ghetto - who had been sent off from the collecting camp at Solun [Thessaloniki, Greece] almost simultaneously, one train after the other, were sorted out for liquidation in Treblinka in the course of roughly four days." – Notably, some foreign Jews were brought to Treblinka in passenger coaches not in boxcars, thus "inspiring" the SS to give them a different welcome before gassing. However, I can't tell what percentage of deportations arrived in passenger trains. Please comment on the way it is explained in the article now. Thanks, <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:darkblue;">Poeticbent</b> <span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:bold;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk 18:43, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think what Squeamish Ossifrage thinks needs to be explained is why these Jews came in passenger cars and not boxcars/cattle wagons. AmericanLemming (talk) 20:59, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it's OK now. The answer to question from about why they had "train tickets and travel supplies" is because they were arriving from far away places in passenger trains (added already), where neither Jews nor Germans had any idea about what was going on in Poland. Meanwhile, the train ride from Warsaw to Treblinka was less than two hours long. The Warsaw Jews were ordered to take along hand-luggage only (like in Chelmno, see Berek Lajcher's story), and besides, they were already accustomed to short trips between transit points within Poland. They were lied to. <b style="font-family:Papyrus; color:darkblue;">Poeticbent</b> <span style="font-size:7.0pt;color:#FFFFFF;font-weight:bold;background:#FF88AF;border:1px solid #DF2929;padding:0.0em 0.2em;">talk  21:28, 3 November 2013 (UTC)