Treblinka extermination camp
Encyclopedia
Treblinka was a Nazi
extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II
near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship
of Poland
. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard
, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women and children were killed at Treblinka. This figure includes more than 800,000 Jews
, but also thousands of Romani people.
The camp, which was operated by the SS and Eastern European Trawniki
s, consisted of Treblinka I and II. The first camp was a forced-labour center
. Inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area. Between June 1941 and July 23, 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment.
Treblinka II was designed as a death factory. More than 99% of all arrivals at this site were immediately sent to its gas chamber
s where they were killed by exhaust fumes from captured Soviet tank engines . The small number who were not killed immediately became Sonderkommandos. These slave labor groups were forced to bury the victims' bodies in mass grave
s. Later corpses were burned on massive open-air pyre
s.
Treblinka II ended operations on following a revolt by its Sonderkommandos. Several German guards were killed when 300 prisoners escaped. Beginning in March 1942, the SS implemented Sonderaktion 1005
to cover up the murder of millions of people during Aktion Reinhard. Prisoners at Treblinka were formed into Leichenkommandos ("corpse units") that exhumed and cremated the corpses buried in mass graves. Relatively little physical evidence of the camps remains today.
Unlike some death camps that also used forced labour, Treblinka II was designed purely for the extermination of people . It was one of five secret camps of Operation Reinhard
. Kulmhof (Chełmno
) extermination camp was built first. It was a pilot project for the development of the next four camps; the remaining three being Belzec
, Sobibor
, and Majdanek
. In addition, killing facilities were developed in Auschwitz II-Birkenau within the already existing camp (Auschwitz I). Operation Reinhard was overseen by SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik
in occupied Poland as Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler
's deputy. Unlike other Nazi concentration camps, Operation Reinhard camps reported directly to the RSHA, which in turn reported directly to Himmler. Himmler kept the control of the program close to him but delegated the work to Globocnik. Operation Reinhard used the forced euthanasia
program (Action T4
) for site selection, construction and the training of personnel.
The camp of Treblinka was located 100 kilometres (62.1 mi) northeast of the Polish capital Warsaw
, near the village of Małkinia Górna, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) from the Treblinka railroad station. It was conveniently located approximately halfway between the Warsaw
and Białystok Ghettos. The camp was organized in two subdivisions: Treblinka I and Treblinka II.
located 2 km to the south of the extermination camp. Treblinka I operated between June 1941 and July 23, 1944. In this time half of the 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment. Treblinka I inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area.
for the SS-Totenkopfverbände
and Ukrainian guards, the camp commanders' quarters, a bakery, a storage and barracks for up to 800 prisoners, who were used to operate the camp. A road left this part of the camp and rejoined the highway.
The second section of Treblinka II (lower camp) was the receiving area where the railroad extended from the Treblinka station into the camp. There were two barracks near the tracks that were used to store the belongings of prisoners; one was disguised to look like a railway station, complete with a wooden clock. There were two other buildings about 100 metres (328 feet) from the track. All of the buildings were used to contain the clothing and belongings of the prisoners. One was used as an undressing room for the women, who were also shorn of all of their hair. There was a cashier's office, which collected money and jewellery
for "safekeeping". There was also an "infirmary
", where the sick, old, wounded, and already dead were taken. It was a small barracks, painted white with a red cross on it. There, the prisoners were led to the edge of a ditch where bodies were continuously burning. They had to strip naked and then sit in the edge of the pit before they were shot in the back of the head. Then they fell in the ditch and burned.
The third section of Treblinka II, the upper camp or death camp, was on a small hill. From the lower camp there was an uphill path, cynically called Himmelstraße ("the Road to Heaven") by the SS, which was lined with barbed wire
fences — der Schlauch ("the tube") — and which led directly into the gas chamber
s. Behind this building there was a large pit, 1 metre wide by 20 metres long, inside which fires burned. Rails were laid across the pit and the bodies of gassed victims were placed on the rails to burn. There was also a barracks for the prisoners who operated the upper camp.
and Austrians
) and 80–120 guards. The historical records show that the Treblinka camp guards were of varied ethnic groups and nationalities, comprising not only Germans
(Volksdeutsche
) but also a number of Russia
ns, Ukrainians
, Tatars, Moldova
ns, Latvia
ns, and representatives of Soviet Central Asia
(including a number of collaborating Soviet prisoners of war). Among them served former Red Army
soldiers Ivan o Marchenko and Nikolay Shaleyev.
The majority of the camp work was performed on a forced basis by 700–800 Jewish prisoners, organised into specialised squads (Sonderkommando
s). The blue squad was responsible for unloading the train, carrying the luggage and cleaning the wagons. The red squad had the task of undressing the passengers and taking their clothes to the storage areas. The Geldjuden ("money Jews") were in charge of handling the money, gold, stocks, and jewellery. They were forced to search the prisoners just before they went into the gas chamber. Another, the dentist, would open the mouths of the dead and pull out gold teeth. Another group, dubbed the Totenjuden ("the Jews of death"), lived in Treblinka II and were forced to carry the dead from the gas chamber to the furnaces, sift through the ashes of the dead, grind up recognisable parts, and bury the ashes in pits. Yet another group took care of the upkeep of the camp. Lastly, the camouflage Kommando went every day into the forest and gathered branches to camouflage the camp and the "funnel" by weaving branches in the barbed wires. The work squads prisoners were continuously whipped and beaten by the guards and were often killed. New workers (usually the most healthy people) were selected from the daily arrivals and pressed into the commandos.
There was a bruise rule: if a prisoner had been bruised on the face, he would be shot that evening at roll call
, or the next morning if the bruise first began to show then . Many prisoners, in utter despair at the horrible deaths of their families and unwilling to go on living, committed suicide by hanging themselves in the sleeping barracks with their belts. Normally, the work crews were almost entirely replaced every 3–5 days, with the members of the old crew being sent to their deaths.
had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen
, mobile SS extermination units, in territories conquered by the German army. It became evident, however, that they could not handle the millions of Jews that they had concentrated in the ghettos of occupied countries. So Treblinka, along with the other Operation Reinhard camps, were especially designed for the rapid elimination of the Jews in ghettos. Treblinka was ready on 24 July 1942, when the shipping of Jews began: "According to the SS Brigadeführer
Jürgen Stroop
report, a total of approximately 310,000 Jews were transported in freight train
s from the Warsaw Ghetto
to Treblinka during the period from 22 July to 3 October 1942."
presided as the camp's first commandant on . Eberl was a licensed psychiatrist
, and the only physician
to ever command an extermination camp.
The camp received its first shipment of victims, 6,500 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto
, on . The gas chambers became operational the following day, . Shipments continued on a daily basis thereafter, usually ranging from about 4,000 to 7,000 victims per day, Jews from the ghettos of Poland, mainly Warsaw, most of whom were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Hundreds of the prisoners died from starvation, dehydration or suffocation while in transit to the camp in the cramped rail cars.
Eberl's poor organizational skills soon caused the operation of Treblinka to turn disastrous. At the very beginning, the corpses were buried in mass grave
s, but within days the burial pits were overflowing with bodies, and corpses were instead piled up in camp II because the workers did not have proper time to bury them. At the same time, the gas chambers continually broke down. Therefore, the SS resorted to shooting incoming Jews in the arrival area of the camp and piling bodies throughout the camp.
According to SS-Unterscharführer
Hans Hingst:
The stench from the decomposing bodies could be smelled up to 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away, such as at the nearby village of Treblinka, Masovian Voivodeship. It was evident that large scale killings were happening nearby, which caused concern among the villagers. The village of Treblinka was not complicit in the events at the Treblinka extermination camp, but rather a bystander. On incoming train convoys to Treblinka, many of the soon-to-be-murdered Jews waiting in the railway wagons correctly guessed what would happen to them based upon the stench; thousands instead chose suicide in the trains over death at the hands of the Nazis.
Oskar Berger, a Jewish eyewitness, tells of the camp's state in August 1942:
, the head of Operation Reinhard
, visited Treblinka along with Christian Wirth
and Josef Oberhauser
. Irmfried Eberl
was immediately relieved of his duties. Among the reasons for his dismissal:
Christian Wirth was ordered to temporarily move in to Treblinka to help clean up Eberl's mess. On August 28, Globocnik temporarily suspended deportations to Treblinka. Globocnik chose Franz Stangl
, who had previously been the Commandant of Sobibor extermination camp
, to assume command of Treblinka as Eberl's successor. Stangl had a reputation as a highly competent administrator and people manager with an excellent grasp of detail, and therefore Globocnik trusted that Stangl would be capable of restoring order at Treblinka.
On September 1, Franz Stangl
replaced Irmfried Eberl as Commandant of Treblinka. When Stangl arrived at the camp, he was appalled at the disorganized, disheveled state of the camp. He described Treblinka when he first came to the death camp while it was still under Eberl's command:
restored order in the camp, and the transports of Warsaw and Radom Jews began to arrive again on September 3, 1942. Stangl wanted his camp to look attractive, so he ordered the paths paved and flowers planted along the sides of Seidel Street, near camp headquarters and SS living quarters. The appearance of Treblinka concealed the deadly fate that awaited arriving prisoners.
Stangl liked to wear a white uniform and carry a whip, and so he was nicknamed "The White Death" by prisoners. Despite being directly responsible for the camp's operations, Stangl limited his contact with Jewish prisoners as much as possible. Stangl rarely interfered with unusually cruel acts (that is to say, other than the gassing) perpetrated by his subordinate officers at the camp. He claimed that his dedication had nothing to do with ideology or hatred of Jews. Stangl accepted and grew accustomed to the killings, perceiving prisoners not as humans but merely as "cargo" that must be destroyed. Stangl accepted the extermination of the Jews as a fact. Stangl is quoted as saying:
. These interactions are described in depth in his article.
, one of the commanding officers of the camp, wrote lyrics to a song, which celebrated the Treblinka extermination camp. This song was taught to the few newly arriving Jews who were not killed immediately, who were instead forced to work as slave laborers at the camp (known as Sonderkommandos). These Jews were forced to memorize the song by nightfall of their first day at the camp. The melody for the song came from an SS officer at Buchenwald concentration camp
. The music was written in a happy way, as though the deaths at the camp were a joyful process rather than one of mourning, in the key of D major
. Franz's lyrics for the song are listed below:
Arriving by train, victims were pulled from the train, separated by sex, and ordered to strip naked. In winter, the temperature often dropped to –20 °C (–5 °F). The guards chose who would go to the "infirmary". Jews who were too resistant to the process were taken to the infirmary and shot. Women had their hair cut off before going into the gas chamber. This hair was used "in the manufacture of hair-yarn socks for 'U'-boat
crews and hair-felt foot-wear for the Reichs-railway", to quote from a directive sent to all concentration camp commanders in 1942.
The newly arrived Jews, particularly the men, were beaten incessantly with whips in order to drive them towards the gas chambers. According to testimony of SS officers, men were always gassed first from the transports, while women and children waited outside the gas chamber for their turn. During this time, the women and children could hear the sounds of suffering from inside the gas chamber, and they became well aware of the fate that awaited them, which naturally caused panic and distress, and involuntary defecation.
An entire train transport of people could be killed in a matter of two or three hours.
s that had been captured during the war, and subsequently transported to Treblinka by the Nazis . Most Soviet Red Army tanks from this period in time had diesel engines.
This killing process differed significantly from the process at Auschwitz and Majdanek, where the poisonous gas Zyklon B
was used. At Sobibor and Belzec, exhaust fumes from petrol engines was used. The victims died from suffocation and carbon monoxide
poisoning. This also means that, frequently, victims were not completely dead as a result of the exhaust. The few prisoners who had worked in the Sonderkommandos and survived the camp later testified that victims frequently let out a final gasp of breath from their lungs when they were extracted from the gas chambers.
After the suffocation of the victims in the gas chamber, when the doors of the gas chamber were opened, "the disfigured, bitten prisoners, with ears torn off, lay on top of each other in the most varied posture." The bodies were initially buried in large mass graves; in a later stage of the camp's operation, they were burned on open-air grids made of concrete pillars and railway tracks. Sometimes, the people were not dead and began to revive in the fresh air, especially pregnant women. They were shot by the guards and burned like the others. Some 800–1,000 bodies were burned at the same time, and would burn for 5 hours. The incinerator operated 24 hours a day.
The killing centres had no other function, unlike concentration camps, in which prisoners were used as forced labour for the German war effort. In order to prevent incoming victims from realising their fate, the camp was disguised as a railway station, complete with train schedules, posters of destinations, and what appeared to be a working clock (in reality, a prisoner would move the hands to the approximate time before each convoy arrived). The camp and the process of mass murder is described by Vasily Grossman
, a military reporter serving in the Red Army
, in his work A Hell Called Treblinka, which was used as evidence and distributed at the Nuremberg Trials
.
after he had visited the camp in 1943.
. They seized small arms, sprayed kerosene
on all the buildings and set them ablaze. In the confusion, a number of guards were killed but many more prisoners perished. Of 1,500 prisoners, about 600 managed to escape the camp, but only 40 are known to have survived until the end of the war. There was also a revolt at Sobibor
two months later.
After the revolt, Treblinka ceased operation. Camp commander Kurt Franz
recalled during his testimonies: "After the uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp single-handedly for a month; however, during that period no gassings were undertaken. It was during that period that the original camp was levelled off and lupins were planted." The camp had been badly damaged during the uprising, and the murder of the Polish Jews was also largely complete. It was decided to shoot the last of the Jewish prisoners and shut down the camp. Odilo Globocnik wrote to Himmler: "I have (on October 19, 1943), completed Operation Reinhard, and have dissolved all the camps." The final group of about 30 Jewish girls at Treblinka was shot at the end of November.
In 1965, after a report by Dr. Helmut Krausnick, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich
, the Court of Assize in Düsseldorf
concluded that the minimum number of people killed in Treblinka was 700,000. In 1969, the same court, after new evidence revealed in a report by expert Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler
, reassessed the number to be 900,000. According to the Germans and the guards who were stationed in Treblinka, the figure ranges from 1 million to 1.4 million . According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
, the death toll in the gas chambers of Treblinka II (not including the deaths from forced labor in Camp I) falls in the range of 870,000 to 925,000. It is somewhat difficult to assess exactly the number of those killed, but the approximate number can be established on the basis of the Höfle telegram (see next paragraph) and surviving transport documentation.
In 2001, a copy of a decrypted telegram sent by the deputy commander of Operation Reinhard
was discovered among recently declassified information in Britain. The Höfle Telegram
listed 713,555 Jews killed in Treblinka up to the end of December 1942. With the addition of the transports in 1943 listed in Yitzhak Arad's book, one may arrive at the figure 800,000. On the basis of the telegram and additional data for 1943, Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk estimates the minimum death toll as 780,863.
was the commandant at Treblinka from the summer of 1942. In 1951, Stangl escaped to Brazil
, where he found work at a Volkswagen
factory in São Paulo
. His role in the mass murder of men, women, and children was known to the Austrian authorities, but Austria
did not issue a warrant for Stangl's arrest until 1961. In spite of his registration under his real name at the Austrian consulate in Brazil, it took another six years before he was tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal
and arrested in Brazil. After extradition to West Germany
he was tried for the deaths of around 900,000 people. He admitted to these killings but argued: "My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty." Found guilty on 22 October 1970, Stangl was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of heart failure in prison in Düsseldorf on 28 June 1971.
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship
Masovian Voivodeship
-Administrative division:Masovian Voivodeship is divided into 42 counties : 5 city counties and 37 "land counties"...
of Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women and children were killed at Treblinka. This figure includes more than 800,000 Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, but also thousands of Romani people.
The camp, which was operated by the SS and Eastern European Trawniki
Trawniki concentration camp
Trawniki concentration camp, in the village of Trawniki about 40 km southeast of Lublin in Poland, was an SS labour camp which provided forced labourers for a nearby industrial plant to work in appalling conditions with little food...
s, consisted of Treblinka I and II. The first camp was a forced-labour center
Arbeitslager
Arbeitslager is a German language word which means labor camp.The German government under Nazism used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during World War II....
. Inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area. Between June 1941 and July 23, 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment.
Treblinka II was designed as a death factory. More than 99% of all arrivals at this site were immediately sent to its gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
s where they were killed by exhaust fumes from captured Soviet tank engines . The small number who were not killed immediately became Sonderkommandos. These slave labor groups were forced to bury the victims' bodies in mass grave
Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...
s. Later corpses were burned on massive open-air pyre
Pyre
A pyre , also known as a funeral pyre, is a structure, usually made of wood, for burning a body as part of a funeral rite...
s.
Treblinka II ended operations on following a revolt by its Sonderkommandos. Several German guards were killed when 300 prisoners escaped. Beginning in March 1942, the SS implemented Sonderaktion 1005
Sonderaktion 1005
The Sonderaktion 1005, also called Aktion 1005, or Enterdungsaktion was conducted during World War II to hide any evidence that millions of people had been murdered by Nazi Germany in Aktion Reinhard in occupied Poland....
to cover up the murder of millions of people during Aktion Reinhard. Prisoners at Treblinka were formed into Leichenkommandos ("corpse units") that exhumed and cremated the corpses buried in mass graves. Relatively little physical evidence of the camps remains today.
Prelude
Unlike some death camps that also used forced labour, Treblinka II was designed purely for the extermination of people . It was one of five secret camps of Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
. Kulmhof (Chełmno
Chelmno extermination camp
Chełmno extermination camp, also known as the Kulmhof concentration camp, was a Nazi German extermination camp that was situated 50 kilometres from Łódź, near a small village called Chełmno nad Nerem . After annexation by Germany Kulmhof was included into Reichsgau Wartheland in 1939...
) extermination camp was built first. It was a pilot project for the development of the next four camps; the remaining three being Belzec
Belzec extermination camp
Belzec, Polish spelling Bełżec , was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust...
, Sobibor
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
, and Majdanek
Majdanek
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
. In addition, killing facilities were developed in Auschwitz II-Birkenau within the already existing camp (Auschwitz I). Operation Reinhard was overseen by SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik
Odilo Globocnik
Odilo Lotario Globocnik was a prominent Austrian Nazi and later an SS leader. He was an acquaintance of Adolf Eichmann, who played a major role in the extermination of Jews and others during the Holocaust...
in occupied Poland as Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's deputy. Unlike other Nazi concentration camps, Operation Reinhard camps reported directly to the RSHA, which in turn reported directly to Himmler. Himmler kept the control of the program close to him but delegated the work to Globocnik. Operation Reinhard used the forced euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
program (Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
) for site selection, construction and the training of personnel.
The camp
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, near the village of Małkinia Górna, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) from the Treblinka railroad station. It was conveniently located approximately halfway between the Warsaw
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
and Białystok Ghettos. The camp was organized in two subdivisions: Treblinka I and Treblinka II.
Treblinka I
Treblinka I was a forced labour campArbeitslager
Arbeitslager is a German language word which means labor camp.The German government under Nazism used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during World War II....
located 2 km to the south of the extermination camp. Treblinka I operated between June 1941 and July 23, 1944. In this time half of the 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment. Treblinka I inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area.
Treblinka II
Treblinka II, the extermination camp, was divided into three parts, covering in total an area measuring 600 metres by 400 metres (1,968 feet by 1,312 feet). The first part was the administrative section, which included barracksBarracks
Barracks are specialised buildings for permanent military accommodation; the word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes. Their main object is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training and esprit de corps. They were sometimes called...
for the SS-Totenkopfverbände
SS-Totenkopfverbände
SS-Totenkopfverbände , meaning "Death's-Head Units", was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich....
and Ukrainian guards, the camp commanders' quarters, a bakery, a storage and barracks for up to 800 prisoners, who were used to operate the camp. A road left this part of the camp and rejoined the highway.
The second section of Treblinka II (lower camp) was the receiving area where the railroad extended from the Treblinka station into the camp. There were two barracks near the tracks that were used to store the belongings of prisoners; one was disguised to look like a railway station, complete with a wooden clock. There were two other buildings about 100 metres (328 feet) from the track. All of the buildings were used to contain the clothing and belongings of the prisoners. One was used as an undressing room for the women, who were also shorn of all of their hair. There was a cashier's office, which collected money and jewellery
Jewellery
Jewellery or jewelry is a form of personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.With some exceptions, such as medical alert bracelets or military dog tags, jewellery normally differs from other items of personal adornment in that it has no other purpose than to...
for "safekeeping". There was also an "infirmary
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
", where the sick, old, wounded, and already dead were taken. It was a small barracks, painted white with a red cross on it. There, the prisoners were led to the edge of a ditch where bodies were continuously burning. They had to strip naked and then sit in the edge of the pit before they were shot in the back of the head. Then they fell in the ditch and burned.
Barbed wire
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire , is a type of fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strand. It is used to construct inexpensive fences and is used atop walls surrounding secured property...
fences — der Schlauch ("the tube") — and which led directly into the gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
s. Behind this building there was a large pit, 1 metre wide by 20 metres long, inside which fires burned. Rails were laid across the pit and the bodies of gassed victims were placed on the rails to burn. There was also a barracks for the prisoners who operated the upper camp.
Organization of the camp
The camp was operated by 20–25 SS overseers (GermansGermans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
and Austrians
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
) and 80–120 guards. The historical records show that the Treblinka camp guards were of varied ethnic groups and nationalities, comprising not only Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
(Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
) but also a number of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
ns, Ukrainians
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, Tatars, Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
ns, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
ns, and representatives of Soviet Central Asia
Soviet Central Asia
Soviet Central Asia refers to the section of Central Asia formerly controlled by the Soviet Union, as well as the time period of Soviet administration . In terms of area, it is nearly synonymous with Russian Turkestan, the name for the region during the Russian Empire...
(including a number of collaborating Soviet prisoners of war). Among them served former Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
soldiers Ivan o Marchenko and Nikolay Shaleyev.
The majority of the camp work was performed on a forced basis by 700–800 Jewish prisoners, organised into specialised squads (Sonderkommando
Sonderkommando
Sonderkommandos were work units of Nazi death camp prisoners, composed almost entirely of Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during The Holocaust...
s). The blue squad was responsible for unloading the train, carrying the luggage and cleaning the wagons. The red squad had the task of undressing the passengers and taking their clothes to the storage areas. The Geldjuden ("money Jews") were in charge of handling the money, gold, stocks, and jewellery. They were forced to search the prisoners just before they went into the gas chamber. Another, the dentist, would open the mouths of the dead and pull out gold teeth. Another group, dubbed the Totenjuden ("the Jews of death"), lived in Treblinka II and were forced to carry the dead from the gas chamber to the furnaces, sift through the ashes of the dead, grind up recognisable parts, and bury the ashes in pits. Yet another group took care of the upkeep of the camp. Lastly, the camouflage Kommando went every day into the forest and gathered branches to camouflage the camp and the "funnel" by weaving branches in the barbed wires. The work squads prisoners were continuously whipped and beaten by the guards and were often killed. New workers (usually the most healthy people) were selected from the daily arrivals and pressed into the commandos.
There was a bruise rule: if a prisoner had been bruised on the face, he would be shot that evening at roll call
Roll call
Roll call is the calling of the names of people from a list to determine the presence or absence of the listed people . The term applies to the calling itself, to the time moment of this procedure, and to a military signal that announces it Roll call is the calling of the names of people from a...
, or the next morning if the bruise first began to show then . Many prisoners, in utter despair at the horrible deaths of their families and unwilling to go on living, committed suicide by hanging themselves in the sleeping barracks with their belts. Normally, the work crews were almost entirely replaced every 3–5 days, with the members of the old crew being sent to their deaths.
History of the camp
Before Operation Reinhard, over half a million JewsJews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
, mobile SS extermination units, in territories conquered by the German army. It became evident, however, that they could not handle the millions of Jews that they had concentrated in the ghettos of occupied countries. So Treblinka, along with the other Operation Reinhard camps, were especially designed for the rapid elimination of the Jews in ghettos. Treblinka was ready on 24 July 1942, when the shipping of Jews began: "According to the SS Brigadeführer
Brigadeführer
SS-Brigadeführer was an SS rank that was used in Nazi Germany between the years of 1932 and 1945. Brigadeführer was also an SA rank....
Jürgen Stroop
Jürgen Stroop
Jürgen Stroop, , was a high-ranking Nazi Party and Gestapo official during World War II. In 1952, he was extradited to Poland, convicted of war crimes, and hanged.-Early life:Jürgen Stroop was born in Detmold, in the Principality of Lippe, German Empire, the son of a police officer...
report, a total of approximately 310,000 Jews were transported in freight train
Freight train
A freight train or goods train is a group of freight cars or goods wagons hauled by one or more locomotives on a railway, ultimately transporting cargo between two points as part of the logistics chain...
s from the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
to Treblinka during the period from 22 July to 3 October 1942."
Irmfried Eberl
Irmfried EberlIrmfried Eberl
SS-Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl was an Austrian Nazi war criminal who helped to establish, and was the first commandant of, the Treblinka extermination camp, where he worked from until his dismissal on . As a psychiatrist, Eberl was the only physician to command an extermination camp. In...
presided as the camp's first commandant on . Eberl was a licensed psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, and the only physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
to ever command an extermination camp.
The camp received its first shipment of victims, 6,500 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
, on . The gas chambers became operational the following day, . Shipments continued on a daily basis thereafter, usually ranging from about 4,000 to 7,000 victims per day, Jews from the ghettos of Poland, mainly Warsaw, most of whom were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Hundreds of the prisoners died from starvation, dehydration or suffocation while in transit to the camp in the cramped rail cars.
Eberl's poor organizational skills soon caused the operation of Treblinka to turn disastrous. At the very beginning, the corpses were buried in mass grave
Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...
s, but within days the burial pits were overflowing with bodies, and corpses were instead piled up in camp II because the workers did not have proper time to bury them. At the same time, the gas chambers continually broke down. Therefore, the SS resorted to shooting incoming Jews in the arrival area of the camp and piling bodies throughout the camp.
According to SS-Unterscharführer
Unterscharführer
Unterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
Hans Hingst:
The stench from the decomposing bodies could be smelled up to 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away, such as at the nearby village of Treblinka, Masovian Voivodeship. It was evident that large scale killings were happening nearby, which caused concern among the villagers. The village of Treblinka was not complicit in the events at the Treblinka extermination camp, but rather a bystander. On incoming train convoys to Treblinka, many of the soon-to-be-murdered Jews waiting in the railway wagons correctly guessed what would happen to them based upon the stench; thousands instead chose suicide in the trains over death at the hands of the Nazis.
Oskar Berger, a Jewish eyewitness, tells of the camp's state in August 1942:
Changes in leadership
The Nazi hierarchy swiftly responded to these problems by developing a more efficient, more concealed, more sophisticated system of mass murder. On August 26, 1942, Odilo GlobocnikOdilo Globocnik
Odilo Lotario Globocnik was a prominent Austrian Nazi and later an SS leader. He was an acquaintance of Adolf Eichmann, who played a major role in the extermination of Jews and others during the Holocaust...
, the head of Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
, visited Treblinka along with Christian Wirth
Christian Wirth
Christian Wirth was a German police and SS officer who was one of the leading contributors to the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard....
and Josef Oberhauser
Josef Oberhauser
Josef Oberhauser was the only Nazi to be successfully convicted for war crimes committed at the Bełżec extermination camp.-Background and career:...
. Irmfried Eberl
Irmfried Eberl
SS-Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl was an Austrian Nazi war criminal who helped to establish, and was the first commandant of, the Treblinka extermination camp, where he worked from until his dismissal on . As a psychiatrist, Eberl was the only physician to command an extermination camp. In...
was immediately relieved of his duties. Among the reasons for his dismissal:
- for incompetence in disposing of the bodies of the tens of thousands of people who had been killed.
- for not killing people in an efficient and timely enough manner.
- for not properly concealing the mass murder from locals.
- for being part of a ring at the camp that was stealing the possessions of the people who had been murdered and sending them back to cohorts at Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. This last activity had been expressly forbidden by Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich HimmlerHeinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, as he had wanted this property to be contributed to the German war effort.
Christian Wirth was ordered to temporarily move in to Treblinka to help clean up Eberl's mess. On August 28, Globocnik temporarily suspended deportations to Treblinka. Globocnik chose Franz Stangl
Franz Stangl
Franz Paul Stangl was an Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited and tried in West Germany for the mass murder of 900,000 people, and in 1970 was found guilty...
, who had previously been the Commandant of Sobibor extermination camp
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
, to assume command of Treblinka as Eberl's successor. Stangl had a reputation as a highly competent administrator and people manager with an excellent grasp of detail, and therefore Globocnik trusted that Stangl would be capable of restoring order at Treblinka.
On September 1, Franz Stangl
Franz Stangl
Franz Paul Stangl was an Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited and tried in West Germany for the mass murder of 900,000 people, and in 1970 was found guilty...
replaced Irmfried Eberl as Commandant of Treblinka. When Stangl arrived at the camp, he was appalled at the disorganized, disheveled state of the camp. He described Treblinka when he first came to the death camp while it was still under Eberl's command:
Franz Stangl
Franz StanglFranz Stangl
Franz Paul Stangl was an Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited and tried in West Germany for the mass murder of 900,000 people, and in 1970 was found guilty...
restored order in the camp, and the transports of Warsaw and Radom Jews began to arrive again on September 3, 1942. Stangl wanted his camp to look attractive, so he ordered the paths paved and flowers planted along the sides of Seidel Street, near camp headquarters and SS living quarters. The appearance of Treblinka concealed the deadly fate that awaited arriving prisoners.
Stangl liked to wear a white uniform and carry a whip, and so he was nicknamed "The White Death" by prisoners. Despite being directly responsible for the camp's operations, Stangl limited his contact with Jewish prisoners as much as possible. Stangl rarely interfered with unusually cruel acts (that is to say, other than the gassing) perpetrated by his subordinate officers at the camp. He claimed that his dedication had nothing to do with ideology or hatred of Jews. Stangl accepted and grew accustomed to the killings, perceiving prisoners not as humans but merely as "cargo" that must be destroyed. Stangl accepted the extermination of the Jews as a fact. Stangl is quoted as saying:
Kurt Franz
Instead, the man most responsible for day-to-day interactions with the prisoners was Kurt FranzKurt Franz
Kurt Hubert Franz was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust.-Early life:...
. These interactions are described in depth in his article.
The Treblinka song
As reported by lower-ranking SS officers and soldiers, Kurt FranzKurt Franz
Kurt Hubert Franz was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust.-Early life:...
, one of the commanding officers of the camp, wrote lyrics to a song, which celebrated the Treblinka extermination camp. This song was taught to the few newly arriving Jews who were not killed immediately, who were instead forced to work as slave laborers at the camp (known as Sonderkommandos). These Jews were forced to memorize the song by nightfall of their first day at the camp. The melody for the song came from an SS officer at Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
. The music was written in a happy way, as though the deaths at the camp were a joyful process rather than one of mourning, in the key of D major
D (musical note)
D is a musical note a whole tone above C, and is known as Re within the solfege system.When calculated in equal temperament with a reference of A above middle C as 440 Hz, the frequency of middle D is approximately 293.665 Hz. See pitch for a discussion of historical variations in...
. Franz's lyrics for the song are listed below:
Looking squarely ahead, brave and joyous, at the world. The squads march to work. All that matters to us now is Treblinka. It is our destiny. That's why we've become one with Treblinka in no time at all. We know only the word of our Commander. We know only obedience and duty. We want to serve, to go on serving until little luck ends it all. Hurray!
- Lyrics by Kurt Hubert FranzKurt FranzKurt Hubert Franz was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust.-Early life:...
- Testimony of SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) Franz Suchomel, who worked at Treblinka.
New gas chambers
In September 1942, Stangl supervised the building of new, larger gas chambers to augment the previously existing gas chambers. The new gas chambers became operational in early autumn 1942. It is believed that these death chambers were capable of killing 3,000 people in two hours, and 12,000 to 15,000 victims easily every day, with a maximum capacity of 22,000 deaths in 24 hours.Extermination
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
crews and hair-felt foot-wear for the Reichs-railway", to quote from a directive sent to all concentration camp commanders in 1942.
The newly arrived Jews, particularly the men, were beaten incessantly with whips in order to drive them towards the gas chambers. According to testimony of SS officers, men were always gassed first from the transports, while women and children waited outside the gas chamber for their turn. During this time, the women and children could hear the sounds of suffering from inside the gas chamber, and they became well aware of the fate that awaited them, which naturally caused panic and distress, and involuntary defecation.
An entire train transport of people could be killed in a matter of two or three hours.
Gas chambers: exhaust instead of gas
The gas chamber had portholes through which it was possible to view the death of the victims. The victims were gassed with carbon monoxide generated by diesel engines. There is some historical debate over whether these engines were diesel or petrol. The engines were those of Soviet Red Army tankTank
A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...
s that had been captured during the war, and subsequently transported to Treblinka by the Nazis . Most Soviet Red Army tanks from this period in time had diesel engines.
This killing process differed significantly from the process at Auschwitz and Majdanek, where the poisonous gas Zyklon B
Zyklon B
Zyklon B was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide infamous for its use by Nazi Germany to kill human beings in gas chambers of extermination camps during the Holocaust. The "B" designation indicates one of two types of Zyklon...
was used. At Sobibor and Belzec, exhaust fumes from petrol engines was used. The victims died from suffocation and carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide , also called carbonous oxide, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas that is slightly lighter than air. It is highly toxic to humans and animals in higher quantities, although it is also produced in normal animal metabolism in low quantities, and is thought to have some normal...
poisoning. This also means that, frequently, victims were not completely dead as a result of the exhaust. The few prisoners who had worked in the Sonderkommandos and survived the camp later testified that victims frequently let out a final gasp of breath from their lungs when they were extracted from the gas chambers.
After the suffocation of the victims in the gas chamber, when the doors of the gas chamber were opened, "the disfigured, bitten prisoners, with ears torn off, lay on top of each other in the most varied posture." The bodies were initially buried in large mass graves; in a later stage of the camp's operation, they were burned on open-air grids made of concrete pillars and railway tracks. Sometimes, the people were not dead and began to revive in the fresh air, especially pregnant women. They were shot by the guards and burned like the others. Some 800–1,000 bodies were burned at the same time, and would burn for 5 hours. The incinerator operated 24 hours a day.
The killing centres had no other function, unlike concentration camps, in which prisoners were used as forced labour for the German war effort. In order to prevent incoming victims from realising their fate, the camp was disguised as a railway station, complete with train schedules, posters of destinations, and what appeared to be a working clock (in reality, a prisoner would move the hands to the approximate time before each convoy arrived). The camp and the process of mass murder is described by Vasily Grossman
Vasily Grossman
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was a Soviet writer and journalist. Grossman trained as an engineer and worked in the Donets Basin, but changed career in the 1930s and published short stories and several novels...
, a military reporter serving in the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, in his work A Hell Called Treblinka, which was used as evidence and distributed at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
.
Cremation Pits
Within the compounds of the Treblinka extermination camp, there were two cremation pits used to incinerate bodies. The bodies were placed on grates and burned in whole within the wood and ash. These pits were roughly located just east of the new gas chambers. The camp memorial has recreated a simulation of the "extermination pits" using melted basalt and stone which is placed on a concrete fundamental plate. The bodies that were previously burned during the camp's operation were dug up and cremated pending the orders of Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
after he had visited the camp in 1943.
Resistance
On August 2, 1943, the prisoners in the work details rebelledRebellion
Rebellion, uprising or insurrection, is a refusal of obedience or order. It may, therefore, be seen as encompassing a range of behaviors aimed at destroying or replacing an established authority such as a government or a head of state...
. They seized small arms, sprayed kerosene
Kerosene
Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...
on all the buildings and set them ablaze. In the confusion, a number of guards were killed but many more prisoners perished. Of 1,500 prisoners, about 600 managed to escape the camp, but only 40 are known to have survived until the end of the war. There was also a revolt at Sobibor
Sobibór extermination camp
Sobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
two months later.
After the revolt, Treblinka ceased operation. Camp commander Kurt Franz
Kurt Franz
Kurt Hubert Franz was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust.-Early life:...
recalled during his testimonies: "After the uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp single-handedly for a month; however, during that period no gassings were undertaken. It was during that period that the original camp was levelled off and lupins were planted." The camp had been badly damaged during the uprising, and the murder of the Polish Jews was also largely complete. It was decided to shoot the last of the Jewish prisoners and shut down the camp. Odilo Globocnik wrote to Himmler: "I have (on October 19, 1943), completed Operation Reinhard, and have dissolved all the camps." The final group of about 30 Jewish girls at Treblinka was shot at the end of November.
Aftermath
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, the Court of Assize in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
concluded that the minimum number of people killed in Treblinka was 700,000. In 1969, the same court, after new evidence revealed in a report by expert Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler
Wolfgang Scheffler
Born 1956 in Innsbruck, Austria, and recipient of a Special Recognition Award at the 2006 Nuclear-Free Future Award, Wolfgang Scheffler is the inventor/promoter of Scheffler Reflectors, large, flexible parabolic reflecting dishes that concentrate sunlight for solar cooking in community kitchens,...
, reassessed the number to be 900,000. According to the Germans and the guards who were stationed in Treblinka, the figure ranges from 1 million to 1.4 million . According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history...
, the death toll in the gas chambers of Treblinka II (not including the deaths from forced labor in Camp I) falls in the range of 870,000 to 925,000. It is somewhat difficult to assess exactly the number of those killed, but the approximate number can be established on the basis of the Höfle telegram (see next paragraph) and surviving transport documentation.
Höfle Telegram
Operation Reinhard
Operation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
was discovered among recently declassified information in Britain. The Höfle Telegram
Höfle Telegram
The Höfle Telegram is a document discovered in 2000 among recently declassified World War II materials from the Public Record Office in Kew, England...
listed 713,555 Jews killed in Treblinka up to the end of December 1942. With the addition of the transports in 1943 listed in Yitzhak Arad's book, one may arrive at the figure 800,000. On the basis of the telegram and additional data for 1943, Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk estimates the minimum death toll as 780,863.
Treblinka Trials
The Austrian Franz StanglFranz Stangl
Franz Paul Stangl was an Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited and tried in West Germany for the mass murder of 900,000 people, and in 1970 was found guilty...
was the commandant at Treblinka from the summer of 1942. In 1951, Stangl escaped to Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, where he found work at a Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...
factory in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
. His role in the mass murder of men, women, and children was known to the Austrian authorities, but Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
did not issue a warrant for Stangl's arrest until 1961. In spite of his registration under his real name at the Austrian consulate in Brazil, it took another six years before he was tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal
Simon Wiesenthal KBE was an Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter....
and arrested in Brazil. After extradition to West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
he was tried for the deaths of around 900,000 people. He admitted to these killings but argued: "My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty." Found guilty on 22 October 1970, Stangl was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of heart failure in prison in Düsseldorf on 28 June 1971.
Organizers of the camp
- Odilo Lotario GlobocnikOdilo GlobocnikOdilo Lotario Globocnik was a prominent Austrian Nazi and later an SS leader. He was an acquaintance of Adolf Eichmann, who played a major role in the extermination of Jews and others during the Holocaust...
, SS-HauptsturmführerHauptsturmführerHauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...
(Captain) and SS-Polizeiführer (SS Police Chief), Head of Operation ReinhardOperation ReinhardOperation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps... - Hermann Julius HöfleHermann HöfleHermann Julius "Hans" Höfle was an Austrian-born SS-Sturmbannführer . He was deputy to Odilo Globocnik in the Aktion Reinhard program, serving as his main deportation and extermination expert...
, SS-HauptsturmführerHauptsturmführerHauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...
(Captain), Coordinator of Operation ReinhardOperation ReinhardOperation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps... - Richard Wolfgang ThomallaRichard ThomallaRichard Wolfgang Thomalla was an SS-Hauptsturmführer and a civil engineer by profession who was head of the SS Central Building Administration in Lublin and was in charge of construction of the Operation Reinhard death camps Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka during The Holocaust in Occupied...
, SS-ObersturmführerObersturmführerObersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi party that was used by the SS and also as a rank of the SA. Translated as “Senior Assault Leader”, the rank of Obersturmführer was first created in 1932 as the result of an expansion of the Sturmabteilung and the need for an additional rank in...
(First Lieutenant), Head of death camp construction during Operation ReinhardOperation ReinhardOperation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps... - Erwin Hermann LambertErwin LambertErwin Hermann Lambert was a perpetrator of the Holocaust. In profession, he was a master mason, building trades foreman, Nazi Party member and member of the Schutzstaffel with the rank of SS-Unterscharführer...
, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), Head of gas chamber construction during Operation ReinhardOperation ReinhardOperation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
(constructed large gas chambers) - Christian WirthChristian WirthChristian Wirth was a German police and SS officer who was one of the leading contributors to the program to exterminate the Jewish people of Poland, known as Operation Reinhard....
, SS-HauptsturmführerHauptsturmführerHauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...
(Captain), Inspector of Operation ReinhardOperation ReinhardOperation Reinhard was the code name given to the Nazi plan to murder Polish Jews in the General Government, and marked the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the use of extermination camps...
Commandant
- Dr. Irmfried EberlIrmfried EberlSS-Obersturmführer Irmfried Eberl was an Austrian Nazi war criminal who helped to establish, and was the first commandant of, the Treblinka extermination camp, where he worked from until his dismissal on . As a psychiatrist, Eberl was the only physician to command an extermination camp. In...
, SS-ObersturmführerObersturmführerObersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi party that was used by the SS and also as a rank of the SA. Translated as “Senior Assault Leader”, the rank of Obersturmführer was first created in 1932 as the result of an expansion of the Sturmabteilung and the need for an additional rank in...
(First Lieutenant), — (relieved of duty due to incompetence) - Franz Paul StanglFranz StanglFranz Paul Stangl was an Austrian-born SS commandant of the Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust. He was arrested in Brazil in 1967, extradited and tried in West Germany for the mass murder of 900,000 people, and in 1970 was found guilty...
, SS-ObersturmführerObersturmführerObersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi party that was used by the SS and also as a rank of the SA. Translated as “Senior Assault Leader”, the rank of Obersturmführer was first created in 1932 as the result of an expansion of the Sturmabteilung and the need for an additional rank in...
(First Lieutenant), — (transferred from Commandant of Sobibor extermination campSobibór extermination campSobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
) - Kurt Hubert FranzKurt FranzKurt Hubert Franz was an SS officer and one of the commanders of the Treblinka extermination camp. Franz was one of the major perpetrators of genocide during the Holocaust.-Early life:...
, SS-UntersturmführerUntersturmführerUntersturmführer was a paramilitary rank of the German Schutzstaffel first created in July 1934. The rank can trace its origins to the older SA rank of Sturmführer which had existed since the founding of the SA in 1921...
(Second Lieutenant), — (promoted from deputy commander after camp's revolt in August 1943)
Deputy commanders
- Heinrich Arthur MatthesHeinrich MatthesHeinrich Arthur Matthes was a German SS-Scharführer who worked as a deputy commandant of Treblinka extermination camp during the Operation Reinhard phase of the Holocaust....
, SS-ScharführerScharführerScharführer was a Nazi Party title that was used by several paramilitary organizations from 1925 to 1945. Translated as “Squad Leader”, the title of Scharführer can trace its origins to the First World War, where a Scharführer was often a Sergeant or Corporal who commanded special action or shock...
(Sergeant), Deputy commandant, chief of the Totenlager (extermination area) - Karl Pötzinger, Deputy commandant, head of cremation
- Theodor von Eupen, Commandant of Camp I (forced labor camp)
Executioners
- Fritz Schmidt, SS-SturmbannführerSturmbannführerSturmbannführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party equivalent to major, used both in the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel...
(Major), operated gas chambers - Gustav Münzberger, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), operated gas chambers
Other officers
- Max Biala — stabbed to death by prisoner Meir Berliner on September 11, 1942
- Paul Bredow, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal) - Herbert Floss, SS-ScharführerScharführerScharführer was a Nazi Party title that was used by several paramilitary organizations from 1925 to 1945. Translated as “Squad Leader”, the title of Scharführer can trace its origins to the First World War, where a Scharführer was often a Sergeant or Corporal who commanded special action or shock...
(Sergeant) - Erich Fritz Erhard Fuchs, SSSchutzstaffelThe Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
-ScharführerScharführerScharführer was a Nazi Party title that was used by several paramilitary organizations from 1925 to 1945. Translated as “Squad Leader”, the title of Scharführer can trace its origins to the First World War, where a Scharführer was often a Sergeant or Corporal who commanded special action or shock...
(Sergeant) - Lorenz HackenholtLorenz HackenholtLorenz Marie Hackenholt built and operated the gas chamber at the Bełżec extermination camp...
, SS-HauptscharführerHauptscharführerHauptscharführer was a Nazi paramilitary rank which was used by the Schutzstaffel between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank was the highest enlisted rank of the SS, with the exception of the special Waffen-SS rank of Sturmscharführer....
(First Sergeant) - Josef Hirtreiter, SS-ScharführerScharführerScharführer was a Nazi Party title that was used by several paramilitary organizations from 1925 to 1945. Translated as “Squad Leader”, the title of Scharführer can trace its origins to the First World War, where a Scharführer was often a Sergeant or Corporal who commanded special action or shock...
(Sergeant) - Otto Richard Horn, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), corpse detail - Kurt KüttnerKurt KüttnerKurt Küttner was an SS-Oberscharführer who served at Treblinka extermination camp.Before World War II, Küttner worked for many years as a warden in the German police. At Treblinka he was in charge of the lower camp of Treblinka II, where he became one of the most feared and hated SS officers...
, SS-OberscharführerOberscharführerOberscharführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that existed between the years of 1932 and 1945. Translated as “Senior Squad Leader”, Oberscharführer was first used as a rank of the Sturmabteilung and was created due to an expansion of the enlisted positions required by growing SA membership...
(Staff Sergeant), Lower Camp of Camp II - Karl Emil Ludwig
- Willy Mätzig
- Willi Mentz, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), Lazaret/Infirmary - August Wilhelm MieteAugust MieteAugust Wilhelm Miete was a member of the SS who rose to the rank of Scharführer . He worked at the Grafeneck and Hadamar Euthanasia Centres, and then at Treblinka extermination camp. Miete was arrested in 1960 and tried in West Germany for participating in the mass murder of at least 300,000 people...
, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), Lazaret/Infirmary - Max Möller
- Willi Post, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), Head of Ukrainian Guard, VolksdeutscheVolksdeutscheVolksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
/SS squad leaders - Albert Franz Rum, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), gas chambers - Karl Schiffer, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), command of twelve Ukrainians - Otto Stadie, SS-StabsscharführerStabsscharführerStabsscharführer was a non-commissioned officer title which was used by the Waffen-SS between the years of 1938 to 1945. Stabsscharführer was not an actual SS rank, but rather a positional title held by the senior SS-NCO of a company, battalion, or regiment...
(Staff Squad Leader), camp administration - Ernst Stengelin, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal) — killed in revolt on October 14, 1943 - Franz Suchomel, SS-UnterscharführerUnterscharführerUnterscharführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party used by the Schutzstaffel between 1934 and 1945. The SS rank was created after the Night of the Long Knives...
(Corporal), "Goldjuden" supervisor
See also
- List of Nazi-German concentration camps
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and EugenicsKaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and EugenicsThe Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927. The Rockefeller Foundation supported both the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics...
- Research Materials: Max Planck Society ArchiveResearch Materials: Max Planck Society ArchiveAt the end of World War II, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Society, and the institutes associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were renamed "Max Planck" institutes. The records that were archived under the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes were placed in the...
- Shark Island, German South West Africa
- Richard GlazarRichard GlazarRichard Glazar was a Czech Jew who lived through World War II, one of only a few survivors of the Treblinka death camp. He portrayed the horror of Treblinka to the world in his book Trap with a Green Fence.-Family:Glazar was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia...
- Martin GrayMartin Gray (Holocaust survivor)Martin Gray, born as Mieczysław Grajewski is a Holocaust survivor and author.thumb|"Make that the wounds, if hope wins on sufferings, become the veins in which life's blood flows." Monument erected close to M-G former [[Brussels]] residence in Uccle district.In 1946 Gray emigrated to the United...
- Sol Rosenberg
- Natan SpigelNatan SpigelNatan Spigel was a Jewish artist painter born in Poland. Spigel was a key member of the influential Expressionist group, Jung Idysz. He showed throughout Europe until his internment in Radomsko ghetto in 1939...
External links
- Treblinka from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"
- Zchor.org, A year in Treblinka, eye-witness report by an escaped prisoner of the camp, Yankel Wiernik.
- Frontline - Treblinka
- Treblinka
- Treblinka Death Camp History Treblinka II Josef Gross: Přežil jsem (I survived)
- Interview (video) with Franz Suchomel (SS guard at Treblinka)