Treblinka

Treblinka

The Treblinka Camp was split into Treblinka 1 and Treblinka 2.

Treblinka 1 was built in September 1941 and was a Forced-Labor Camp where 20,000 Men and Women (mostly Political Prisoners and Victims of the German :apanka Round-Ups in Warsaw) worked in the Gravel Pit or Irrigation Area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the Cremation Pits (used to burn the thousands of Men, Women and Children murdered in the Gas Chambers.)

Prisoners were woken up at 5 am and had an hour to dress, use the Latrines and line up for Roll-Call outside, then had Breakfast and went to their Forced Labor.

They worked from 7 am until 4 pm (in the Winter) and 6 pm (in the Summer) with an hour for Lunch from 12 pm-1 pm.

They had Roll-Call and then their Dinner at 7 pm before being confined to the Barracks for the night.

Prisoners received the following Rations: half a Liter of watery soup or porridge for Breakfast, a Liter of soup for Lunch, and a cup of unsweetened coffee and a  little rye bread for Dinner.

10,000 of the 20,000 Inmates of Treblinka 1 died (from Diseases like Typhus, being Beaten by the Guards, Exhaustion or sent to the nearby Gas Chamber.)

Treblinka 2 was the Death Camp and was divided into three parts.

Camp 1 was the German Administrative Compound where the Guards lived.

Camp 2 was the Receiving Area where incoming Transports of Prisoners were offloaded.

 Camp 3 was the location of the 6 Gas Chambers.

Men, Women and Children arriving at Treblinka all came to Treblinka 2 first.

The German Guards selected a few Men and Women with Special Skills (like Jewelers, Furriers, etc.) or who looked strong and healthy and sent them to either work at Treblinka 1 or kept them in Treblinka 2 and used them to either sort the Personal Items (Clothes, Jewels, Currency, etc.) of the Victims to be sent to Germany or used them in the Sonderkommando.

The Sonderkommando were forced to help new Arrivals off the Trains before removing the Personal Items to Barracks where the Non-Sonderkommando sorted everything.

The Sonderkommando then had to helped the Men, Women and Children selected to die to undress in one of two Barracks before the Prisoners were forced to walk naked through a Fenced Path that the Germans called “die Himmelstraße” ("The Road to Heaven") to the Gas Chambers.

The Germans told the Prisoners that they were going to take a shower to be deloused before entering the Work Camp.

The Men were always gassed to death first while the Women and Children were forced to wait outside naked (able to hear the final screams of their Husbands, their Fathers, their Brothers, etc.)

20 minutes later the Sonderkommando were forced to enter the Gas Chambers and remove the dead bodies, clean the Gas Chambers for the Women and Children waiting outside and then burn the dead bodies.

(Burning Treblinka 2 (the Death Camp)  during the Prisoner Uprising on August 2,1943.

This Clandestine Photograph was taken by Franciszek Ząbecki (who was the Station Master at the Treblinka Village Railroad Station and a Member of the Polish Home Army Resistance Group.)

On August 2, 1943 the Prisoners in Treblinka 2 carried out an Uprising.

It was a Monday when their were no Transports of People to be gassed to death so several German and Ukrainian Guards left the Camp to swim in the nearby Bug River.

840 Jewish Prisoners took part in the Uprising with 400 of them making out of the Death Camp.

300 of the 400 who made it outside the Camp were killed by the German and Ukrainian Guards.

Of the 100 who made it out of the Death Camp and survived the Uprising 70 are known to have survived the War (including 2 Women.)

Only 1 German Guard was wounded and 5 Ukrainian Guards were killed during the Uprising.

Since no German Guard was killed no Official Report of the Uprising was made to Berlin.

On August 19, 1943 the last gassing of Jews took place at Treblinka 2.

100 Jewish Prisoners were kept at Treblinka 2 to destroy the 6 Gas Chambers and all evidence of the German War Crimes.

A Farm was built until of the Death Camp’s ruins and a Ukrainian Camp Guard, Oswald Strebel, a Ukrainian Volksdeutscher (Ethnic German from Ukraine), was given permission to bring his Family from German-Occupied Ukraine where the Family lived on the Farm and were told to tell anyone who asked that they had been farming there for Decades.

From July 23, 1942 until October 19, 1943 9250,000 Jewish Men, Women and Children (including 250,000 from the Warsaw Ghetto) and 2,000 Roma Men, Women and Children were murdered by the Germans in one of the six Gas Chambers there.

(Memorial at Treblinka)

The Soviet Red Army liberated the area on August 19, 1944.

After the Liberation Local Poles (who knew about the Death Camp) looted Treblinka looking for gold and other valuables from the Victims.

Looting continued at Treblinka until 1958.

The Polish Communists built a Large Stone Memorial at Treblinka in 1959.

The Treblinka Trials concerning the Treblinka Death Camp Guards began in 1964 and was held in Düsseldorf, West Germany,

As with the vast majority of Trials of Former Nazis held in West Germany from 1948-1990 the Guards received light Sentences for their Crimes.

In 1964 Treblinka was declared a National Monument of Jewish Martyrdom due to International Demand during the Treblinka Trial in West Germany.

An Exhibition Center was built at Treblinka in 2006.

In 2010, the first Archaeological Excavations at Treblinka took place (finding the remains of one of the six Gas Chambers and 3 Mass Graves.