Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka Extermination Camp was a Nazi Extermination Camp built and operated by Nazi Germany in German Occupied Poland during The Holocaust. It was located in a forest north-east of Warsaw, 4 kilometers south of the Polish village of Treblinka.
Treblinka Extermination Camp operated from July 1942 to November 1943. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were killed in it's gas chambers along with 2,000 Roma Gypsy People. More Jews were killed at Treblinka than any other Nazi Extermination Camp apart from Auschwitz Birkenau Concentration/Extermination Camp. Treblinka was overseen by Hans Frank, Governor-General of Occupied Poland.
In late 1939, SS Gruppenfurher Odilo Globocnik began to concentrate Poland's Jews into a number of ghettos in Poland while awaiting the German High Command's Decision on what "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question" would be. In the autumn of 1941, SS Reichsfurher Heinrich Himmler met with Globocnik to organize the murder of Poland's 3.5 million Jews, construction of Extermination Camps Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, began immediately. Operation Reinhard was the codename for the extermination program against the Jewish People of Poland, it launched The Holocaust. Himmler ordered that Operation Reinhard would be completed in 12 months, he had turned to the Nazi Action T4 Euthenasia Program to implement the killing method of gas chambers into the extermination program against the Jewish People in Extermination Camps. Franz Stangl who became the commandant of Treblinka Extermination Camp in September 1942 had been an employee in the T-4 Euthenasia Program in Nazi Germany.
Between 1939 and 1940, 70,000 Physically and Mentally Disabled German People had been murdered in the T-4 Euthenasia Program's Debut. The victims of the T-4 Euthenasia Program had been killed by sealing them in gas chambers and then filling the gas chambers with carbon-monoxide. Although experiments with Zyklon B would later become infamous, the T-4 Euthenasia Program with carbon-monoxide had proved it's effectiveness. Franz Stangl had learned how to kill in large numbers in the T-4 Euthenasia Program, at Treblinka, he would scale this up to an industrial level. Treblinka was equipped with 10 small gas chambers and 1 large gas chamber. Members of the Jewish Council at Treblinka Abraham Krezpicki and Jankiel Wiernik described the gas chambers:
Abraham Krezpicki was deported to the Treblinka Extermination Camp on August 25, 1942 and described the first gas chambers:
“But the longish, not too large brick building standing in the middle of the “Death Camp” had a strange fascination for me, this was the gas chamber.
Now I noticed that, spread over the flat roof of the building, there was a green wire net whose edges extended slightly beyond the building’s walls. Beneath the net, on top of the roof I could see a tangle of pipes.
The walls of the building were covered with concrete. The gas chambers had not been operating for a week. I was able to look through one of the two strong whitewashed iron exits that opened to be open.
I saw before me a room which was not too large. It looked like a regular shower room with all the accoutrements of a public bath-house. The walls of the room were covered with small, white tiles.
It was very fine, clean work. The floor was covered with orange terra cotta tiles. Nickel-plated metal faucets were set into the ceiling. In late August 1942 the Nazis started to construct larger gassing facilities in order to cope with the number of transports."
Jankiel Wiernik recalled:
“It turned out that we were building ten additional gas chambers, more spacious than the old ones, 7 by 7 metres or about 50 square metres. The building was laid out according to the corridor system with five chambers on each side of the corridor. Each chamber had two doors, one door leading into the corridor through which the victims were admitted, the other door facing the camp was used for the removal of the corpses."
The Nazi Explanation for the extermination process at Treblinka was that it was quick and effiecent and professional, Camp Commandant Franz Stangl's first impressions when he arrived at Treblinka were very different:
"We could smell it, kilometers away, when we were about 15-20 minutes drive from Treblinka, we began to see corpses by the line, first just 2 or 3 then more, and as we drove into Treblinka, there were what looked like hundreds of them, just lying there. It obviously looked as if it had been there for days in the heat, and the station was a train full of Jews, some dead, some alive, that too looked as if it had been there for days, Treblinka that day was the most awful thing I saw during all of the Third Reich."
Appauled by what he had seen, Stangl set out to create a streamlined killing machine at Treblinka, under his command, the camp could murder 6,000 people within 25 minutes, as long as the railways could maintain it. Jews arriving at Treblinka in packed trains from the ghettos were exhausted and dehydrated and had no idea they were coming to a Death Camp. The killing process at Treblinka was described by SS UKraininan Wachmann Pavel Leleko:
“When the procession of the condemned approached the gas chambers the 'motorists' of the gas chambers would shout, 'Go quickly or the water will get cold.'
Each group of women or men were hurried along from the rear by some German and very often the Kommandant himself – Franz accompanied by a dog. As they approached the gas chamber the people began to back away in terror.
Oftentimes they tried to turn back. At that point lashes and clubs were used. Franz immediately set upon the condemned his dog which was specially trained to snap at their sex organs. At each gas chamber there were 5-6 Germans besides the “motorists” with their dogs. With clubs and lashes they drove the people into the corridor of the gas chamber and then into the chambers.
In this the Germans would compete with the “motorists” in brutality towards the people selected to die. Marchenko for instance had a sword with which he mutilated the people. He cut the breasts of women. After the chambers were filled they slammed shut with hermetically sealed doors. The “motorists” Marchenko and Nikolay would turn on the motors.
Through pipes, exhaust gas was fed into the chambers. The process of asphyxiation began. Some time after starting the motor, the “motorists” would look into the chambers through special observation slits along side each door, to see how the killing process was going.
When questioned what they see there, the “motorists” answered that the people are writhing, twisting one another. I also tried to look in through the little window into the chamber, but somehow I did not succeed in seeing anything.
Gradually the noise in the chambers subsided. After about fifteen minutes the motors were turned off, an unusual calm set in."
The bodies of the murdered victims were then removed from the gas chambers and taken on rail-cars to the cremation pits, then the process of extermination would begin with a new trainload of passengers, the cycle would take no more than 1 hour. On August 2, 1943, members of the Jewish council rose up against the Nazi Garrison at Treblinka and broke out of the Camp. 24 months after the beginning of Operation Reinhard, more than 1.6 million Jews had been murdered, 250,000 at Sobibor, 500,000 at Belzec, and 900,000 at Treblinka. In a final note to Himmler, Odilo Globocnik noted the final result of Operation Reinhard. Globocnik noted "The Jews have been exterminated, and the currency and valuables of the Jews have been passed on to the Reich."
18 months after Treblinka had closed, Adolf Hitler committed suicide and the Third Reich was defeated by the Allies in 1945. Odilo Globocnik was captured in Austria by British Troops, but he took his own life before he could be interrogated. Franz Stangl escaped to Brazil, but was then captured in 1967, he was tried for the murder of 900,000 people at Treblinka. Stangl was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Stangl died in prison in 1971.