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Death was not easy. The process was cruel, and extended. It took 30 minutes or more to kill the victims. At Treblinka the dead were buried in several large mass graves. However, after the debacle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43, Himmler became increasingly concerned about secrecy and with eliminating the evidence of these crimes. This lead to a directive that all the dead be disinterred and cremated so that no one could reconstruct the number of murdered. Himmler's directive also was applied to the dead resulting from the Einsatzgruppen operations in the Soviet Union. At Treblinka, the graves were opened around March of 1943 and the remains cremated. The method used consisted of several steel railroad rails set on concrete pylons to form a grid. New and old corpses were piled atop the rails, sandwiched with layers of wood and set on fire. By late summer of that year all the old burial pits had been emptied, the corpses burned and their bones crushed. Staffing at the Reinhard camps was minimal. It consisted of a contingent of approximately 40 SS, of which only 20 were ever on hand at any one time, the others being on home leave.
Approximate Word count = 781
Approximate Pages = 3.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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