Built in 1941, and opened on July 23, 1942. Treblinka was known as an extermination camp that murdered almost 870,000 Jews and about 2,000 gypsies. It was also known as a transit camp where Jews stayed until they could be sent to work somewhere else.
Treblinka was built as one of the three "Action Reinhard" death camps. It was also the second deadliest camp next to Auschwitz. Treblinka was located in the Northeastern part of Poland, and was 51 miles Northeast of Warsaw, Poland, and 2.5 miles Northwest of Malkinia.
The Journey
In the packed cattle cars it could take up to three days or more to reach Treblinka. The conditions in the tightly packed cars were terrible. The rations of food were slim and the stench of death and urine was all around. A survivor of Treblinka, Abraham Kezepicki describes his journey:
"It is impossible to describe the tragic situation in our airless, closed freight car. It was one big toilet. Everyone tried to push his way to a small air to a small air aperture . . . . . I found a crack in one of the floorboards into which I pushed my nose in order to get a little air. The stink in the car was unbearable. People were defecating in all four corners of the car . . . . The men removed their shirts and lay half naked. Some of the women, too, took off their dresses and lay in their undergarments. People lay on the floor, gasping and shuddering as if feverish, laboring to get some air into their lungs" |
The Arrival
As soon as the prisoners got there, those to sick to walk were taken to a nearby pit and shot. Then the healthy ones heard a speech by an SS officer and went through a process called "selection". You were to be glanced at and then sent either to the left or the right. If you were sent to the right you would live, but if you were sent to the left you would be executed in one of the 3 ( soon to be 6) gas chambers. Just think that the life of you and your family members were up to just one man. Mostly mothers, older women, older men, young children, and the people that were sick were sent to the left. Young men and women were usually sent to the right. After the "selection" the soon to be victims would then have to send postcards to encourage their relatives to settle east. The victims were than taken to the chambers.
The Gas Chambers
The chambers were 656 by 820 feet and completely was fenced in and separated from the rest of the camp. The brick building had three gas chambers in it and looked like showers from the outside and in. Pipes were attached to the ceiling that ended in what looked like shower heads. The chambers were to create the impression of a shower. After the victims had all their hair shaved off they were taken in. Once inside the order from a German officer to a Ukrainian officer was "Ivan, water" which then the gas would slowly expand through the building killing as it went. The gassing didn't always happen fast. Since the room was tightly packed it would sometimes take up to 30 to 40 minutes before the victims actually died. Then the corpses were removed from the building through a different door and searched for valuables. After that they were dragged to mass graves and then the orders were to dispose of them in a efficient way. Starting in the Fall of 1942 this meant dragging the bodies to a grid and burning them. The chambers were then cleaned and made ready for the next group of prisoners. SS sergeant Franz Suchomel describes it:
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"Treblinka was a primitive but efficient production line of death, understand? Primitive, yes. But worked well, the production line of death." |
Surviving
The prisoners who went to the right were then shown to their barracks where they were given some food. Then they were left to sleep. When they were roughly woken up they had to stay in lines with women on one side and men on the other. Then the prisoners had to stand in their lines for hours so that they could be counted. If any were missing, often up to 10 prisoner were shot. The prisoners would then be put to work at an assortment of jobs such as: cleaning, working the gas chambers, clearing out cattle cars, or other odd jobs.
The Food
The Nazis supplied little food to the Jews, water downed cabbage soup, and sometimes if they were lucky enough even potatoes and bread. One survivor describes the food they got:
"From day to day our meager rations were reduced they distributed a slice of bread which was for the morning and which we were not allowed to eat until then. As we twisted and turned on our bunks at night, our insides were so empty that we couldn't stop thinking about that slice of bread until we broke off a piece… that tasted like clay and smelled like a sick animal. There were those who gobbled up the entire piece… in the morning they could expect harsh punishment." |
Resistance and Rebellions
The Nazis made the prisoners go through a specific routine to minimize the chances of rebellion or resistance. Sometimes it didn't help. Three uprisings took place in Treblinka. The biggest resistance happened in August 1943. A group of 50 to 70 men planned to take weapons from the camp armory to destroy the camp installations and allow inmates to flee. It was anticipated and out of the 750 prisoners which tried to escape 70 survived. Other acts of resistance happened on December 1942 and on September 11, 1942. If one SS man was killed in the attempts about more than 160 Jews would be killed for it.
Escape Attempts
Sept. 13, 1942 - Avraham Krzepicki, having been there 18 days escaped
Oct. 30, 1942 - Two prisoners cut through the fences and escaped only to
caught 2 miles away.
Dec. 31, 1942 - 5 men escaped through a tunnel and all but 1 was caught
Lots of attempts have been made and lots of prisoners seceded, but many more prisoners did not. If any prisoners were caught they would be killed immediately.
The Staff
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Eberl, Oberstum- SS Fuhrer Imfried- until replaced by Stangl Franz, Kurt- Deputy Commandant- held command from Sept. 1942 to Oct.1942 Kuttner, Kurt- SS sergeant- shot by prisoners during escape attempt in which 750 participated and about 70 survived Lampert, Erwin- unknown Stangl Franz- took over Eberl's Commandant in August 1942 Also staffed by Germans, Ukrainians, and Jewish prisoners. 20 or 30 SS men served as core leadership. Ukrainians acted as guards, security personnel, and other jobs like operating the gas chambers. 700 to 1,000 Jews performed the manual labor and tended to personal needs to the Germans and Ukrainians. |
Franz Stangl
Kurt Franz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Two Treblinkas | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There were actually two Treblinkas. Treblinka 1 and Treblinka 2. Treblinka 1 was a prison where Polish and other prisoners did labor work in large sand and gravel quarries. The accused prisoners then built Treblinka 2, which was an extermination, camp. The work began in the late May and ended on July 22, 1942. They combined camps and just called it Treblinka. When they built Treblinka 1the prisoners built 2 fences. The outside was a barbed wire fence and the inside was a fence with tree branches covering it so you couldn't see the activities going on inside. Treblinka was built in a rectangle shape 1,312 feet wide by 1,968 feet long. It had guard towers at each corner. The pits were 5 acres long. When it was built there were 3 chambers, but in September 3 larger chambers were built, with a total of 6 all together.
Deportations Deportees from all over Europe were transported to Treblinka from such places as Poland, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, Germany, and the Soviet Union. Here’s a list: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Is He "Ivan the Terrible"?
Israel’s Supreme Court will decide if John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian-born American factory worker, really is "Ivan the Terrible" the "butcher" of Treblinka, who ran the gas chambers. Some witnesses’ state that he was there, while others said that he wasn’t, and even one man stated that he even thought that he had killed him. But since scientists found a new illness called the Holocaust Survivor Syndrome, the witnesses can’t be called evidence. The only hard evidence is that his I.D. card shows that he’s from Trawniki training camp, which puts him in Sobibor, a different concentration camp.
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Arica Shepard 7th Grade Rossville Jr. High Spring 2001 Bibliography |
Click to See the Present-Treblinka |
