Vassili Grossman and the “Hell of Treblinka”

Abstract

This article analyzes O inferno de Treblinka by Vassili Grossman. The book, written from interviews that the author conducted with some prisoners who had managed to escape and hide after the August 1943 field revolt, and farmers and residents of the surrounding countryside. This is not trying to play the feelings of those who suffered and not to try to summarize the facts that have made the country one of the most horrific events of our time. The place of the writer is not even the testimony, direct or indirect, and not the scholar who seeks through facts and figures to address the issue of the Holocaust. It is to forge a look that conveys the experience the horror of the borders and bring it to the center of the human condition.