The Road Book

As the winter of 1942-43 was drawing to an end, Himmler came to Treblinka....

Here, the color fades to black and white; the novelist takes out his notepad, becomes a journalist. This happened.

..one of the people who saw him has told us that the minister of death walked up to a huge grave pit and, for a long time, stared silently into it....

It would take two more winters, but Himmler already knew.

Later that same day the SS Reichsführer flew back. Before leaving Treblinka, he issued an order that dumbfounded the three members of the camp command. ... They were to start work immediately on digging up the corpses and burning every last one of them; the ashes and cinders were to be removed from the camps and scattered over the fields and roads. ... the newly gassed were to be burned at once.

There are short pieces of fiction also here, and letters to his mother - Dearest Mama, I learned about your death in the winter of 1944....

But it's the grainy, jumping film, smuggled at what cost, of Himmler looking at what he'd done. An architect, a cleaner, without remorse.

The ashes and crushed cinders swish softly. We enter the camp. We tread the earth of Treblinka. The lupine pods split open at the least touch; they split with a faint ping and millions of tiny peas scatter over the earth. The sounds of the falling peas and bursting pods come together to form a single soft, sad melody....