Museum of the German Labor and Extermination Camp in Treblinka.
Treblinka I - Labor Camp The Penal Labor Camp operated from the summer of 1941 to the end of July 1944. The initiator and organizer was the district governor of Sokołów Podlaski, Ernst Gramss. The commandant throughout the period was Theo van Eupen. The German staff numbered about 20 people. They were assisted by guard companies, mainly Ukrainians, numbering about 100 people. 20,000 prisoners passed through the camp, of whom about 10,000 died or were shot.
Treblinka II - Extermination Camp
The Treblinka II extermination camp (center) was built by the Germans in mid-1942 next to the penal labor camp that existed nearby. It was established as part of "Operation Reinhard", aimed at the physical liquidation of the Jewish population. It occupied 17 hectares of land. It was surrounded by a high barbed wire fence. The crew consisted of 30-40 Germans and Austrians, who managed the camp, and a company of guards, about 100-120 people, mainly of Ukrainian origin. The camp commandant was appointed medical doctor Irmfried Eberl, who was succeeded by Franz Stangl. The deputy commandant was Kurt Franz.
The first transport of people deported here arrived on July 23, 1942, bringing Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. From that day on, Jews were brought here mainly from occupied Poland, but also from Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, the USSR, as well as Germany and Austria. Roma and Sinti from Poland and Germany were also sent here.
The deportees were killed with exhaust gases in gas chambers built especially for this purpose. It is estimated that over 800 thousand people died here. To cover up the traces of the crime, the bodies were burned on specially constructed grates.
On August 2, 1943, an armed uprising organized by prisoners broke out in the camp. Out of 840 people, only about 200 managed to escape from the camp. At most, about 100 could live to see the end of the war. After the uprising, the camp slowly began to be liquidated. In November 1943, all camp buildings and installations were dismantled. A house was built for a Ukrainian family, and the camp area was ploughed and sown with lupine. Before the arrival of the Eastern Front, the buildings were burned down.
The Treblinka II camp was one of three extermination centers established by the Germans as part of Operation Reinhardt. It had been in operation since July 1942, serving the extermination of the Jewish population. According to Jacek A. Młynarczyk, the minimum number of its victims should be estimated at 780,863 people. On August 2, 1943, an uprising broke out in the camp, during which about 400 prisoners escaped[2]. Shortly afterwards, the Germans began to liquidate the camp and erase all traces of its existence. By November 17, 1943, the fence and surviving buildings had been dismantled, and the mass graves, from which hundreds of thousands of corpses had been previously exhumed and burned, were filled in and sown with lupine. A farm was built on the former camp grounds, where two Ukrainian guards and their families were imprisoned[3]. The Germans were forced out of the Treblinka area in August 1944. Fearing the approaching Red Army, both guards set fire to their farm buildings and fled with their families[4]. A year later, the only remains of the farm were the remains of the foundations of the farm building and the excavation of the basement. The fence has not survived[5]. It was dismantled, like the ruins of the farm, by the local population, who used the material obtained in this way to rebuild farms destroyed during the passage of the front[6]. The only remains of the camp itself are the remains of the railway ramp; they still existed in 1962[7].
Translated by Google •
In the know? Log-in to add a tip for other adventurers!