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Janusz Korczak was an inspirational teacher and writer who cared passionately about the rights and welfare of children. He founded an orphanage in Warsaw and stayed with the children through the Ghetto and transport to the Treblinka death camp.
You can download the PDF version of Janusz Korczak's life story here (Pronounce using a soft 'ge' sound, eg Korge-ack)
Janusz Korczak was an inspirational teacher and writer who cared passionately about the rights and welfare of children. His books were well known long before the outbreak of the Second World War. He had served in the Polish army, and was also a medical doctor; he had chosen to work in a hospital for the poor, so his earnings had been low. Korczak was an outstanding educator who, as early as 1912, spoke and wrote extensively about the right of each child, regardless of background or social standing, to be a happy and constructive citizen. He was committed to social justice and believed that education had a vital role to play in this, and gained an international reputation for what were then groundbreaking ideas.

In putting these ideas into practice, Korczak founded two large orphanages in the city of Warsaw, in Poland. One was in the Jewish part of the city. Korczak, who was himself Jewish, was Head of both. The orphanages was described as a children's democracy; the children themselves decided who could stay and who could not, and had their own parliament, court and newspaper, in keeping with Korczak's philosophy.

With Hitler's rise to power came his invasion policies, and the Nazis moved throughout Eastern Europe. In line with their racist ideology, they evicted Jewish families from their homes and sent them to live in designated areas. These areas, the ghettos, were essentially large prison camps, controlled and well guarded. The children at one of Korczak's orphanages were therefore among the hundreds of Jews enclosed within the Warsaw ghetto. Korczak had the option of staying with the children in his other Warsaw orphanage, since the ghetto wall now separated the two. However, he chose to go with the children in the ghetto because he felt that their needs were greater, taking on the task of looking after 200 Jewish children there, aged between seven and fourteen.

Conditions in the ghettos were appalling, where families were crowded together without adequate supplies of food or water. Many people died from starvation, disease and casual executions carried out by the Nazis. Eventually, the ghettos were 'cleared' and destroyed as part of the Nazi systematic attempt to rid Europe of all Jews. Those who had not already died were taken away to the extermination camps. Korczak could do nothing to save the children from his orphanage, since all Jews were marked for deportation. Eventually their turn would come and they, too, would be loaded onto a train and taken away.

Escape from the ghetto was virtually impossible, especially for so many children. If they could get outside the walls, the local population would have been able to tell where they were from and someone would have denounced them; the penalties for not informing on Jews were severe. They needed safe houses, false papers and a great deal of outside help, which was unlikely to be given. However, Korczak could have saved himself. Friends outside the ghetto, especially those who had been in his orphanage before the war had prepared for Korczak a secret room and false papers. An old Polish pupil, Igor Neverly, disguised himself as a sewer inspector and visited Korczak at the orphanage inside the ghetto. He begged his old teacher to escape with him into the outside world and live in hiding until the war was over, as he had so much to give in the post-war world. And yet, Janusz Korczak chose to remain with 'his' children. Hiding his own fear and helplessness, when the time came, he led the children in five orderly lines, quietly through the streets of the ghetto, to the waiting railway wagons, comforting the youngest and instilling courage in all. They were despatched in cattle trucks to Treblinka, a 'death camp' where arrivals were immediately sent straight to the gas chambers.

Although Korczak was not able to save his children from the Nazis, he did make a great deal of difference to those he comforted to the end, and to those who saw his example when the children were marched through Warsaw by the Nazis and onto the trains. While he lived and died at a time and in a place where the abuse of all human rights was on a colossal scale, Korczak's greatest legacy is perhaps the inspiration he provided for the promotion of children's rights worldwide, through not only his books, speeches and writings, but also by his personal example. Most of his ideas were included in the UNESCO charter for children's rights after the war.

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Holocaust Memorial Day Trust | Janusz Korczak

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Janusz Korczak was an inspirational teacher and writer who cared passionately about the rights and welfare of children. He founded an orphanage in Warsaw and stayed with the children through the Ghetto and transport to the Treblinka death camp.

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Jewish inmates started a group in 1943 to fight back at the Nazis. They cautiously got weapons from the camp's armory. Hundreds of Jews stormed the main gate with about 300 of them actually escaping. Sadly, most of them were tracked down and killed.

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Treblinka was one of three killing centers in Operation Reinhard, the SS plan to murder almost two million Jews living in the German-administered territory of occupied Poland.

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TREBLINKA - Samuel Willenberg - Abstract

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All articles and videos have links attached to them (some pictures do too in the captions/description)
-Time Line
-Photos
-Photos (Willenbergs art)

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Up to 700,000 to 900,000 people were murdered in Treblinka making it one of the most deadly camps.

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"The revolt brought operations at Treblinka to an end."

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German officials ordered that Treblinka II be dismantled in the fall of 1943.

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Treblinka became one of three killing centers created as part of Operation Reinhard (also known as Aktion Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhard). It was first established as a forced-labor camp.

In November 1941, under the auspices of the SS and Police Leader for the Warsaw District in the General Government, SS and police authorities established a forced-labor camp for Jews, known as Treblinka. This camp was later referred to as Treblinka I. It also served the SS and police authorities as a labor education camp for non-Jewish Poles whom the Germans perceived to have violated labor discipline. Both Polish and Jewish inmates, imprisoned in separate compounds, were deployed as forced labor. The majority of the forced laborers worked in a nearby gravel pit.

In July 1942, the authorities of Operation Reinhard completed the construction of a killing center, referred to as Treblinka II. Treblinka II was intended for the extermination of Warsaw's Jews and located in the Warsaw District of the General Government. However, because it was part of Operation Reinhard, it was administered by Odilo Globocnik. Globocnik was the SS and Police Leader of the Lublin District.

When Treblinka II commenced operations, the two other Operation Reinhard killing centers, were already in operation. These killing centers were Belzec and Sobibor.

The Location and Topography of Treblinka II

Treblinka labor camp and killing center were established during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. They were located in the Warsaw District of the General Government ( Generalgouvernement).

The labor camp was known as Treblinka I. It was constructed around a gravel pit that had been worked before the war and was located about 3.5 miles from the Treblinka village railway station. While this was a sparsely populated area, it was in close proximity to an important railway junction in a larger village called Malkinia Gorna. The Malkinia Gorna railway junction was located about mid-way on the approximately 100-mile rail line between Warsaw and Bialystok. Its location provided good rail connections between districts of the General Government and the cities of Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Bialystok.

Operation Reinhard authorities chose the site for the Treblinka killing center in this remote area. Treblinka II was opened approximately a mile south of the labor camp. It was located near the village of Wolka Okraglik along another railway line, the Malkinia-Siedlce connection. The Germans improved the rail connections between these various points by building a rail spur that led from the labor camp to the killing center and that also connected to the Malkinia station.

The site of the killing center was heavily wooded and hidden from view. It was laid out in a trapezoid covering an area of 1,312 by 1,968 feet (an area equivalent to almost 34 soccer fields). Pine branches woven into the eight-foot tall barbed-wire fence and trees planted around the perimeter served as camouflage, blocking any view into the camp from the outside. Watchtowers 26 feet high (almost 2.5 stories) were placed along the fence and at each of the four corners.

The killing center was divided into three parts: the reception area, the living area, and the killing area. The living area contained housing for German staff and the guard unit. It also contained administrative offices, a clinic, storerooms, and workshops. One section contained barracks that housed those Jewish prisoners selected from incoming transports to provide forced labor. This forced labor was intended to support the camp's function: mass murder.

Deportations to Treblinka

Deportations to Treblinka came mainly from the ghettos of the Warsaw and Radom districts in the General Government. Between late July and September 1942, the Germans deported around 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. Between August and November 1942, SS and police authorities deported around 346,000 Jews to Treblinka II from the Radom District. From October 1942 until February 1943, the Germans deported to the Treblinka killing center more than 110,000 Jews from the Bialystok District, a section of German-occupied Poland that was attached administratively to German East Prussia. Treblinka also received transports of at least 33,300 Jews from the Lublin District.

German SS and police authorities deported Jews to Treblinka from the Bulgarian-occupied zones in Thrace and Macedonia. They also deported some 8,000 Jews from Theresienstadt in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Other small groups of Jews of undetermined numbers were killed at Treblinka II. The Germans deported these groups from Germany, Austria, France, and Slovakia via various transit locations in the General Government. In addition, an undetermined number of Roma (Gypsies) and Poles were killed at Treblinka II.

Deportations to Treblinka continued until the spring of 1943. Most prominent among the deportations were the approximately 7,000 Jews transported from the Warsaw ghetto after its liquidation following the Warsaw ghetto uprising. A few isolated transports arrived after May 1943.

The Staff of Treblinka I and II

The authorities at the killing center, Treblinka II, consisted of a staff of between 25 and 35 German SS and police officials. As with the other Operation Reinhard killing centers, the majority of German camp officials belonged to the T4 ("euthanasia") organization.

The first commandant of Treblinka II was Dr. Irmfried Eberl, a physician. Eberl had gassed patients as medical director of the Brandenburg and Bernburg "euthanasia" facilities. However, his poor management of Treblinka led to his dismissal on August 26, 1942, just six weeks after he arrived. His replacement, SS Captain Franz Stangl, was transferred from the Sobibor killing center. Stangl was a former policeman in the Criminal Police (Kripo). He had previously served as deputy office manager at the Hartheim and Bernburg "euthanasia" killing centers. On August 23, 1943, following the prisoner revolt at Treblinka, Kurt Franz succeeded Stangl as commandant. Franz was previously a cook at the Hartheim, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, and Sonnenstein "euthanasia" centers, as well as at the Belzec killing center. He remained commandant at Treblinka II until its liquidation in November 1943.

SS Captain Theodor van Eupen was the commandant of Treblinka I, the labor camp, from 1941 through 1944. Unlike Treblinka II, which was part of Operation Reinhard, the commandant of Treblinka I did not report to the Operation Reinhard and T4 authorities. Rather, Treblinka I's commandant was subordinate to the SS and Police Leader in Warsaw. Under the leadership of German authorities stood a police auxiliary guard unit of between 90 and 150 men. All of these men were either former Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) of various nationalities or Ukrainian civilians selected or recruited for this purpose. Members of the guard unit were trained at a special facility of the SS and Police Leader in Lublin, the Trawniki training camp.

Mass Murder

Incoming trains of about 50 or 60 cars bound for the killing center first stopped at the Malkinia railway station. Twenty cars at a time were detached from the train and brought into the killing center. The guards ordered the victims to disembark in the reception area, which contained the railway siding and platform. One building erected on the platform was disguised as a small railway station, complete with a wooden clock and fictive rail terminal signs and railway schedules.

German SS and police personnel announced that the deportees had arrived at a transit camp. Deportees were required to hand over all valuables. The reception area contained a fenced-in "deportation square" with two barracks in which deportees-with men separated from women and children-had to undress. It also contained large storerooms. This is where the possessions relinquished by victims were sorted and stored. Next, the goods were shipped to Germany via Lublin.

A camouflaged, fenced-in path led from the reception area to the gas chamber entrance, located in the killing area. This was known as the "tube" [" Schlauch "]. Victims were forced to run naked along this path to the gas chambers, deceptively labeled as showers. Once the chamber doors were sealed, a large diesel engine installed outside the building pumped in carbon monoxide exhaust. All those inside were killed.

Sonderkommando at Treblinka II

The Sonderkommando (special detachment) was a group of Jewish prisoners selected to remain alive as forced laborers. Members of this group worked in the killing area. They removed bodies from the gas chambers and initially buried them in mass graves. In October 1942, camp personnel deployed Jewish forced laborers to exhume these mass graves. The forced laborers were ordered to burn the bodies on open-air "ovens" made from rail track. This was in keeping with the efforts of the Sonderkommando 1005, tasked with excavating and destroying evidence of Nazi mass murder in the German-occupied east. German personnel and the Trawniki-trained auxiliaries periodically murdered the members of detachments of Jewish laborers and replaced them with persons from newly arriving transports.

Sonderkommando prisoners selected as forced laborers worked in the administration-reception area of the camp. They were tasked with forcing the new arrivals to detrain, disrobe, and relinquish their valuables. They were also forced to drive their fellow Jews into the "tube" which led to the gas chambers. Prisoners then sorted the victims' possessions in preparation for transport to Germany. In addition, they cleaned out freight cars for the next deportation. Victims who were too weak or ill to reach the gas chambers on their own were told they would receive medical attention. Members of the Sonderkommando carried them to a camouflaged area, which was disguised as a small clinic using a Red Cross flag. There, SS Corporal Willi Mentz shot the victims in an open pit. Previously, Mentz had performed agricultural work at the Grafeneck and Hadamar "euthanasia" facilities.

Resistance and Revolt in Treblinka

Jewish inmates organized a resistance group in early 1943. When camp operations neared completion, the prisoners feared they would be killed and the camp dismantled. During the late spring and summer of 1943, the resistance leaders decided to revolt. On August 2, 1943, prisoners quietly seized weapons from the camp armory. However, they were discovered before they could take over the camp. Hundreds of prisoners stormed the main gate in an attempt to escape. Many were killed by machine-gun fire. More than 300 did escape-though two-thirds of them were eventually tracked down and killed by German SS and police, as well as by military units. Surviving prisoners were forced to dismantle the camp. They were supervised by German SS and police personnel, who were acting upon orders from Odilo Globocnik. After completion of this job, the German SS and police authorities shot the prisoners.

The End of the Treblinka Camps

German officials ordered that Treblinka II be dismantled in the fall of 1943.

From late July 1942 through September 1943, the camp personnel murdered an estimated 925,000 Jews at the Treblinka killing center. They also killed an unknown number of Poles, Roma, and Soviet POWs. Treblinka I, the forced-labor camp, operated until late July 1944. While the killing center was in operation, some of the arriving Jews were selected and transferred to Treblinka I. Those Jews too weak to work at Treblinka I were periodically sent to Treblinka II to be killed.

During late July 1944, with Soviet troops moving into the area, camp authorities and Trawniki guards shot the 300-700 remaining Jewish prisoners. The camp was hastily dismantled and evacuated. All traces of it were destroyed. Lupine flowers were sown on the grounds, and an ethnic German farmer was installed on the property to camouflage the reality of what had occurred at this site.

Soviet Red Army troops overran the site of both labor camp and killing center during the last week of July 1944.

Last Edited: Mar 3, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Treblinka became one of three killing centers created as part of Operation Reinhard (also known as Aktion Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhard). It was first established as a forced-labor camp. In November 1941, under the auspices of the SS and Police Leader for the Warsaw District in the General Government, SS and police authorities established a forced-labor camp for Jews, known as Treblinka.

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"During late July 1944, with Soviet troops moving into the area, camp authorities and Trawniki guards shot the 300-700 remaining Jewish prisoners. The camp was hastily dismantled and evacuated. All traces of it were destroyed. Lupine flowers were sown on the grounds, and an ethnic German farmer was installed on the property to camouflage the reality of what had occurred at this site."

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Treblinka became one of three killing centers created as part of Operation Reinhard (also known as Aktion Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhard). It was first established as a forced-labor camp.

In November 1941, under the auspices of the SS and Police Leader for the Warsaw District in the General Government, SS and police authorities established a forced-labor camp for Jews, known as Treblinka. This camp was later referred to as Treblinka I. It also served the SS and police authorities as a labor education camp for non-Jewish Poles whom the Germans perceived to have violated labor discipline. Both Polish and Jewish inmates, imprisoned in separate compounds, were deployed as forced labor. The majority of the forced laborers worked in a nearby gravel pit.

In July 1942, the authorities of Operation Reinhard completed the construction of a killing center, referred to as Treblinka II. Treblinka II was intended for the extermination of Warsaw's Jews and located in the Warsaw District of the General Government. However, because it was part of Operation Reinhard, it was administered by Odilo Globocnik. Globocnik was the SS and Police Leader of the Lublin District.

When Treblinka II commenced operations, the two other Operation Reinhard killing centers, were already in operation. These killing centers were Belzec and Sobibor.

The Location and Topography of Treblinka II

Treblinka labor camp and killing center were established during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. They were located in the Warsaw District of the General Government ( Generalgouvernement).

The labor camp was known as Treblinka I. It was constructed around a gravel pit that had been worked before the war and was located about 3.5 miles from the Treblinka village railway station. While this was a sparsely populated area, it was in close proximity to an important railway junction in a larger village called Malkinia Gorna. The Malkinia Gorna railway junction was located about mid-way on the approximately 100-mile rail line between Warsaw and Bialystok. Its location provided good rail connections between districts of the General Government and the cities of Warsaw, Lublin, Radom, and Bialystok.

Operation Reinhard authorities chose the site for the Treblinka killing center in this remote area. Treblinka II was opened approximately a mile south of the labor camp. It was located near the village of Wolka Okraglik along another railway line, the Malkinia-Siedlce connection. The Germans improved the rail connections between these various points by building a rail spur that led from the labor camp to the killing center and that also connected to the Malkinia station.

The site of the killing center was heavily wooded and hidden from view. It was laid out in a trapezoid covering an area of 1,312 by 1,968 feet (an area equivalent to almost 34 soccer fields). Pine branches woven into the eight-foot tall barbed-wire fence and trees planted around the perimeter served as camouflage, blocking any view into the camp from the outside. Watchtowers 26 feet high (almost 2.5 stories) were placed along the fence and at each of the four corners.

The killing center was divided into three parts: the reception area, the living area, and the killing area. The living area contained housing for German staff and the guard unit. It also contained administrative offices, a clinic, storerooms, and workshops. One section contained barracks that housed those Jewish prisoners selected from incoming transports to provide forced labor. This forced labor was intended to support the camp's function: mass murder.

Deportations to Treblinka

Deportations to Treblinka came mainly from the ghettos of the Warsaw and Radom districts in the General Government. Between late July and September 1942, the Germans deported around 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. Between August and November 1942, SS and police authorities deported around 346,000 Jews to Treblinka II from the Radom District. From October 1942 until February 1943, the Germans deported to the Treblinka killing center more than 110,000 Jews from the Bialystok District, a section of German-occupied Poland that was attached administratively to German East Prussia. Treblinka also received transports of at least 33,300 Jews from the Lublin District.

German SS and police authorities deported Jews to Treblinka from the Bulgarian-occupied zones in Thrace and Macedonia. They also deported some 8,000 Jews from Theresienstadt in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Other small groups of Jews of undetermined numbers were killed at Treblinka II. The Germans deported these groups from Germany, Austria, France, and Slovakia via various transit locations in the General Government. In addition, an undetermined number of Roma (Gypsies) and Poles were killed at Treblinka II.

Deportations to Treblinka continued until the spring of 1943. Most prominent among the deportations were the approximately 7,000 Jews transported from the Warsaw ghetto after its liquidation following the Warsaw ghetto uprising. A few isolated transports arrived after May 1943.

The Staff of Treblinka I and II

The authorities at the killing center, Treblinka II, consisted of a staff of between 25 and 35 German SS and police officials. As with the other Operation Reinhard killing centers, the majority of German camp officials belonged to the T4 ("euthanasia") organization.

The first commandant of Treblinka II was Dr. Irmfried Eberl, a physician. Eberl had gassed patients as medical director of the Brandenburg and Bernburg "euthanasia" facilities. However, his poor management of Treblinka led to his dismissal on August 26, 1942, just six weeks after he arrived. His replacement, SS Captain Franz Stangl, was transferred from the Sobibor killing center. Stangl was a former policeman in the Criminal Police (Kripo). He had previously served as deputy office manager at the Hartheim and Bernburg "euthanasia" killing centers. On August 23, 1943, following the prisoner revolt at Treblinka, Kurt Franz succeeded Stangl as commandant. Franz was previously a cook at the Hartheim, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, and Sonnenstein "euthanasia" centers, as well as at the Belzec killing center. He remained commandant at Treblinka II until its liquidation in November 1943.

SS Captain Theodor van Eupen was the commandant of Treblinka I, the labor camp, from 1941 through 1944. Unlike Treblinka II, which was part of Operation Reinhard, the commandant of Treblinka I did not report to the Operation Reinhard and T4 authorities. Rather, Treblinka I's commandant was subordinate to the SS and Police Leader in Warsaw. Under the leadership of German authorities stood a police auxiliary guard unit of between 90 and 150 men. All of these men were either former Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) of various nationalities or Ukrainian civilians selected or recruited for this purpose. Members of the guard unit were trained at a special facility of the SS and Police Leader in Lublin, the Trawniki training camp.

Mass Murder

Incoming trains of about 50 or 60 cars bound for the killing center first stopped at the Malkinia railway station. Twenty cars at a time were detached from the train and brought into the killing center. The guards ordered the victims to disembark in the reception area, which contained the railway siding and platform. One building erected on the platform was disguised as a small railway station, complete with a wooden clock and fictive rail terminal signs and railway schedules.

German SS and police personnel announced that the deportees had arrived at a transit camp. Deportees were required to hand over all valuables. The reception area contained a fenced-in "deportation square" with two barracks in which deportees-with men separated from women and children-had to undress. It also contained large storerooms. This is where the possessions relinquished by victims were sorted and stored. Next, the goods were shipped to Germany via Lublin.

A camouflaged, fenced-in path led from the reception area to the gas chamber entrance, located in the killing area. This was known as the "tube" [" Schlauch "]. Victims were forced to run naked along this path to the gas chambers, deceptively labeled as showers. Once the chamber doors were sealed, a large diesel engine installed outside the building pumped in carbon monoxide exhaust. All those inside were killed.

Sonderkommando at Treblinka II

The Sonderkommando (special detachment) was a group of Jewish prisoners selected to remain alive as forced laborers. Members of this group worked in the killing area. They removed bodies from the gas chambers and initially buried them in mass graves. In October 1942, camp personnel deployed Jewish forced laborers to exhume these mass graves. The forced laborers were ordered to burn the bodies on open-air "ovens" made from rail track. This was in keeping with the efforts of the Sonderkommando 1005, tasked with excavating and destroying evidence of Nazi mass murder in the German-occupied east. German personnel and the Trawniki-trained auxiliaries periodically murdered the members of detachments of Jewish laborers and replaced them with persons from newly arriving transports.

Sonderkommando prisoners selected as forced laborers worked in the administration-reception area of the camp. They were tasked with forcing the new arrivals to detrain, disrobe, and relinquish their valuables. They were also forced to drive their fellow Jews into the "tube" which led to the gas chambers. Prisoners then sorted the victims' possessions in preparation for transport to Germany. In addition, they cleaned out freight cars for the next deportation. Victims who were too weak or ill to reach the gas chambers on their own were told they would receive medical attention. Members of the Sonderkommando carried them to a camouflaged area, which was disguised as a small clinic using a Red Cross flag. There, SS Corporal Willi Mentz shot the victims in an open pit. Previously, Mentz had performed agricultural work at the Grafeneck and Hadamar "euthanasia" facilities.

Resistance and Revolt in Treblinka

Jewish inmates organized a resistance group in early 1943. When camp operations neared completion, the prisoners feared they would be killed and the camp dismantled. During the late spring and summer of 1943, the resistance leaders decided to revolt. On August 2, 1943, prisoners quietly seized weapons from the camp armory. However, they were discovered before they could take over the camp. Hundreds of prisoners stormed the main gate in an attempt to escape. Many were killed by machine-gun fire. More than 300 did escape-though two-thirds of them were eventually tracked down and killed by German SS and police, as well as by military units. Surviving prisoners were forced to dismantle the camp. They were supervised by German SS and police personnel, who were acting upon orders from Odilo Globocnik. After completion of this job, the German SS and police authorities shot the prisoners.

The End of the Treblinka Camps

German officials ordered that Treblinka II be dismantled in the fall of 1943.

From late July 1942 through September 1943, the camp personnel murdered an estimated 925,000 Jews at the Treblinka killing center. They also killed an unknown number of Poles, Roma, and Soviet POWs. Treblinka I, the forced-labor camp, operated until late July 1944. While the killing center was in operation, some of the arriving Jews were selected and transferred to Treblinka I. Those Jews too weak to work at Treblinka I were periodically sent to Treblinka II to be killed.

During late July 1944, with Soviet troops moving into the area, camp authorities and Trawniki guards shot the 300-700 remaining Jewish prisoners. The camp was hastily dismantled and evacuated. All traces of it were destroyed. Lupine flowers were sown on the grounds, and an ethnic German farmer was installed on the property to camouflage the reality of what had occurred at this site.

Soviet Red Army troops overran the site of both labor camp and killing center during the last week of July 1944.

Last Edited: Mar 3, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Treblinka became one of three killing centers created as part of Operation Reinhard (also known as Aktion Reinhard or Einsatz Reinhard). It was first established as a forced-labor camp. In November 1941, under the auspices of the SS and Police Leader for the Warsaw District in the General Government, SS and police authorities established a forced-labor camp for Jews, known as Treblinka.

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Undressed women on their way to the gas chambers (2000)

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Sheryl Silver Ochayon
My colleague Liz Elsby and I sat down to interview Samuel Willenberg on Sunday, December 4, 2011 in his apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel. His wife, Ada, herself a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, sat with us, plied us with tea and pastries, and added to our knowledge and to the discussion.

Samuel was born in 1923 in Czestochowa, Poland. When the Germans invaded Poland he was 16 years old, but he enlisted in the Polish Army in order to fight against them and was wounded severely. His family moved to Opatow for a time. In the fall of 1941, while hiding from the Germans, his two sisters were arrested in Czestochowa. His parents managed to survive in Warsaw with false documents. Samuel himself was taken together with the Jews of Opatow to Treblinka, when the Opatow ghetto was liquidated. He spent about ten months at forced labor in the Treblinka death camp, and participated in the revolt there on August 2, 1943. Later, Samuel joined the Polish underground and took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. For his bravery he was awarded the Virtuti Militari medal, the highest military commendation in Poland, and the Komandorski Order of Polonia Restituta. He made aliyah to Israel in 1950.

Treblinka was the most lethal extermination camp of Operation Reinhard, where approximately 870,000 Jews were murdered during the thirteen months that the camp was in operation, from July, 1942 through August, 1943. Currently it is believed that there are only two survivors of Treblinka who remain alive in the world: Samuel and Kalman Taigman.

Samuel has created a series of fifteen sculptures that are scenes from Treblinka. They have been displayed in Germany, in Poland and in Israel.
Samuel, where did you learn to create art?
My father was an artist - I guess I have the genes.
Did you draw when you were a child?
My father was a painter. My mother didn't allow me to pick up a pencil - she didn't want me to be a poor artist!
So you never learned to draw? It came to you naturally?
Yes.
In the camps, did you ever think about art?
No. In the extermination camps I didn't think of art; the sculptures I did later, after the war.

My artistry is my memory - my ability to remember what my eyes saw... I remember pictures. I see the pictures from "there", even today.
How did you start sculpting?
When I retired 1, I took courses in art at a local university in Tel Aviv ("University Ammamit") . I began with painting but I decided to sculpt.
The sculptures that you sculpt, are they connected to what you experienced? Do they somehow "translate" pictures that you have in your head?
Yes! When you see my sculptures - you see Treblinka.
When you do a sculpture, would you say that you sculpt more for the purpose of making art or for the purpose of documentation, in order to document what happened?
Definitely for purposes of documentation.
The first sculpture I did was the "Scheissmeister" 2.
Why was that the first?
Because it's a symbol of German cynicism, a symbol of EVERYTHING. [Samuel says this through clenched teeth]. With the clothing of the hazzan, with the clock, because of this I did it first.... He is screaming. He's screaming to the heavens. But God is not there. There is no God.
Which sculpture do you think is the strongest?
Everyone thinks a different sculpture is the best. My wife likes the sculpture of the father helping the son take off his shoes. This is what happened right before they went to the gas. This is what the whole history of the Shoah looks like.
Can you tell us more about the sculpture of the little boy with the father helping him to take off his shoes?
Yes. You need to understand where this is happening - that it's not just a father helping the boy off with his shoes at home - this is happening on the way to the gas chamber. That's the explanation - it changes the whole meaning. The little boy is holding a string, because the "reds" 4, the people with the red armbands on the ramp 5, gave strings to the people getting off the train and told them to tie their shoes together.

... This scene with the boy and the father - I saw this happen. I was next to them. I saw the people that this happened to. It happened near a barrack. I saw it happening! Others were taking off their shoes, but by themselves. And then afterwards, I saw the scene always before my eyes. I still see these things today.
After you finish a sculpture, how do you feel?
After I finished the Scheissmeister, I felt like him - like the Scheissmeister. I relived the situation, I was part of him. That's why he is screaming.
How did you feel while working on a sculpture?
When I was sculpting it was impossible to bother me, to talk to me, until I finished sculpting. I become the sculpture; I am inside it.

Ada: When he sculpted, he was "inside" it; he was agitated.

Samuel: But when I finished, I never felt relief. There is no relief! It never gets easier to bear. I only felt a kind of satisfaction.
Every time I made a sculpture, I saw the scene - I lived it. The scene with the boy and the father - I saw this happen. And then afterwards, the scene was always before my eyes.
So the sculptures tell your story instead of you?
Ada: Why instead of him? He tells his story, too - he has told it to groups in Treblinka more than 30 times. He talks to groups in Israel that come from all over the world.
How long does it take you to do a sculpture?
Each is different, but all the sculptures of Treblinka I did in 3 years. I don't make all the details exact.
Do you still sculpt?
No, there wasn't anyone to sculpt for. The Israeli newspapers didn't even cover the exhibitions. I had a well-publicized and well-reviewed exhibition in Warsaw, though. In my exhibition in Warsaw, the caretaker wrote beautifully about my sculptures that they were "grotesque" and showed "the most tragic moments of extreme horror"; she wrote, "The tormented figures of the camp are returning back to life."
Did you ever sculpt anything that happened to you after Treblinka?
No, only Treblinka. Treblinka was the most....
No, the rest is the history of Poland.
But I did create maps - actually drawings - of Treblinka. These were made on the basis of the measurements of the camp recorded in 1944 and published in 1946 in the first Bulletin of the Central Commision for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, a commission created after the war by the provisional Polish government to take evidence of the crimes. I created the drawings in 1981, when my book first came out. Many models of Treblinka have been made throughout the world on the basis of these renderings.
Which sculpture was the most difficult for you to do because it involved the most painful incident for you?
The most difficult sculpture to do was the sculpture that I didn't do. It's the sculpture of when I discovered the truth about my sisters. I wasn't able to make this sculpture. Not at all.

Ada: He relives this incident all the time. On one hand, he is full of the joy of life. On the other hand, he still "sees" this all the time, he remembers.

Samuel: I return to it every single day - I live it, even if I don't want to, alongside my day-to-day life.
What do you think of artists who make Holocaust art without having experienced the Holocaust?
This is normal - in every time, in every era there are artists who never see the incidents they represent in their art.
Do you think there are any limits to Holocaust art?
It depends on the artist. It depends whether history accepts the art. It depends on the trends - you can't know in advance. Look at expressionism - the colors they used. Cubism. It's the same thing - it's normal.
There are sculptures with a lot of details, and there are those with less. Why is that?
I didn't want to create naked women. But [in the sculpture of women on their way to the gas chambers, created in 2000] there are a lot of suitcases - because the Holocaust was not just murder, it was also robbery. And what a robbery!
Which sculpture do you feel is the most important?
There are two: the first is the sculpture of the uprising itself. It shows the heroism of the Jews in trying to destroy Treblinka 7. You know, rebelling in a death camp was a very difficult thing. It was not easy to organize an underground - many prisoners were strangers to each other, and each was afraid of the other because there were informers among the prisoners who might tell the Germans about any conspiracy to revolt. It was a different situation than the uprisings in the ghettos, where there were youth groups and everyone knew each other, relied on each other and trusted one another. In Treblinka it was dangerous to let people in on the secret of the underground because this invited betrayal. I wrote in my book about a prisoner called Kronenberg, a journalist who had worked for Chwila, a Polish-language daily Zionist newspaper published in Lwow. He was entrusted with the secret of the uprising. One day he was caught by the Nazis for not working, and was taken to the Lazarett. As soon as he realized he was about to be killed, he tried everything to save his life, including telling the Germans that there was an underground in the camp, and promising to tell them everything he knew about it if they would only let him live.

In the sculpture of the revolt you can see the young boys who removed grenades, pistols and other weapons from the Nazi's storeroom. One of them is handing over a grenade that was hidden in a bucket used for potatoes. These weapons were delivered throughout the camp. You can also see the overturned baby carriage used by my best friend in the camp, Alfred Boehm, to collect garbage. Alfred was the liaison between the boys and the rest of the camp. He was killed in the gunfire during the uprising - I found him slumped next to his carriage. I am the man on the right, escaping with a gun in my hand.

The sculpture of the escape is also important. It shows what happened when the prisoners in the camp tried to escape while trying to dodge gunfire from the Ukrainian guards in the watchtowers. The camp was surrounded by two rows of barbed wire, but also by anti-tank barriers. Many of the prisoners who tried to escape were killed while trying to climb over the wires, and in order to escape I actually had to climb over the bodies of my friends who were killed
there 8. I was wounded in my foot during the escape.
Can you tell us the story of Ruth Dorfmann?
I was not a frissiere (barber) 10; there was a group of barbers but I was not one of them. Suddenly a big transport arrived, so Kiwe, the SS-man, grabbed some of us to help. I wore the white robe, and I had the scissors, in the "jupa" - the hut that the Germans built. I cut her hair cleanly, for a reason. I did more than I had to - I made it a clean haircut, because if I had just cut randomly here and there, they [the women] would have understood [that the haircut was not for purposes of disinfection, as the Germans told them, but that they were going to be killed. -Ed.] I cut cleanly, as though with a razor, to make it smooth. For a reason. And this girl started talking. She had come from the Warsaw ghetto. She was beautiful. She was naked. And in the background there was fog, like mist, that was rising from the ground, from the warm clothing left on the ground, from the body heat left in the clothing, and maybe also because the women had urinated. They had just come from the big room where all the women were forced to take off their clothing, into a smaller room, through some doors. So in the background there was mist rising from the clothing. And she started talking. She said, "I am Ruth Dorfmann." I remember! She said, "I have a diploma." She had learned in the ghetto. She was about 20, my age.
How old were you?
I was 19, turning 20. I turned 20 in Treblinka.
And she was talking. She asked, "How long will it take?" She knew [that she was about to be killed]! They all knew!
You know, I made a sculpture of a painter who painted all the signs that were on the ramp. Why? Why? The Germans made signs: signs to Bialystok, a clock that didn't really work. The Germans made it look like a real train station.... 11 And it really looked like one.
Tell the story of the sculpture of the girl from Warsaw who lost her mind and stood with the piece of bread.
Ada: You know, Samuel knows the stories of Treblinka. But in the Warsaw ghetto - I was there - there were people dying of hunger, there were people who committed suicide, there were people who went crazy. I was lucky that I was still a girl - maybe I didn't understand everything. But a lot of adults went crazy.

Samuel: Some killed themselves.

Ada: Many people went crazy. So simply, around January 18th, when Ruth Dorfmann arrived on the transport, many of the Jews living in Warsaw already knew where they were being taken. By January there were already instances where people had escaped from the trains on the way to Treblinka and came back to the ghetto and told stories - and we didn't want to believe them. Even today I can't believe what went on in Treblinka, so how could they then? I was about 13 years old in the ghetto. I remember that there were those who came [back to Warsaw] and told that they had escaped from the train, or from the camp itself - but people didn't believe them. And then those who did begin to understand - some of them went crazy, and others committed suicide. And this girl, she was one of those who went crazy.

Samuel: It was winter. There was a girl who got off the train, and just stood there. Everyone else went inside the yard - " Schnell, schnell, schnell, schnell!!" [" Fast, fast, fast! " the Germans yelled]...

Ada: And they went in towards the "Death Road" 12.

Samuel: But this girl stood still. The barracks were just like the ones in Majdanek - they were actually stables for horses - just like in Birkenau. There were two prefabricated barracks standing together. Here there was an opening. 13 And suddenly Miete of the SS - the "Angel of Death" - told the girl to move forward. We saw her entering the sorting yard. He nudged her forward into the yard, like a child rolling a ball forward. And suddenly she saw all the people, all the colors, the open suitcases. 14
And we 15 saw her. We stopped working and we all stared at her.

Ada: And she was dressed differently...

Samuel: You see that she was wearing high heels. She was dressed in all kinds of things she had probably found in one of the destroyed houses in Warsaw, where the people had run away at the last minute. And probably when they ran, they left shoes like this behind. They didn't wear shoes like this!

Ada: I know - my mother was taken to Treblinka. And I know that every time we were called to assemble in a courtyard and rounded up for an Aktion, people wore layers of clothing - they wore as much clothing as they could. Because we believed we were being taken to a labor camp. So you wore a lot of clothing so that you would have a change of clothing - three dresses, several pairs of underwear. So people usually wore very practical clothing. And this girl...

Samuel: She was dressed like a ballerina!

Ada: She was dressed like for a ball. With the high-heeled shoes.

Samuel: And she was staring with these eyes - it was abnormal. She was clutching a piece of bread to her chest. It was something extraordinary. 16
Where did she get the bread? Was it bread that was given out by the Germans at the Umschlagplatz?
Ada: No, I don't think so. When the Germans first started the transports from Warsaw, the miserable people in the ghetto who didn't have anything to eat would go to the Umschlagplatz because there the Germans gave them bread and jam. 18
Afterwards, the Germans already stopped with this.

Samuel: It wasn't in the first days of the transports [so the bread she was clutching wasn't given to her by the Germans]. It was December, 1942 or January, 1943 - around when Arthur Gold 19, the conductor from Warsaw, came.

You don't understand. I saw people, pass by - artists. People you've never heard of. And they were killed in Treblinka. It's hard to explain what art there was! Culture. Warsaw was culture!
Tell us about the sculpture of Arthur Gold.
[The sculpture shows the trio of violinists that the Germans forced to play in the camp. They played popular prewar tunes. Samuel wrote that the tunes reminded the prisoners of years gone by, and "left us depressed and sore of heart. The Germans were pleased with themselves: they had succeeded in organizing an orchestra in the death camp." Willenberg, p. 133].

Samuel: During the time of the exhibition of my sculptures in Israel, the Polish Ambassador came. I put a tape on the side, and while I explained the sculpture to the audience, I put on the music [of Arthur Gold]. I put on music and he cried.

Ada: You know why he cried - because my husband said, "We will stand here for a moment in memory of Arthur Gold. He isn't alive anymore, no one remembers him, he has no grave, so we'll stand here for a minute and listen to his music." And the ambassador cried.

Samuel: You know why they dressed the orchestra like this 20? So that the SS-men could make fun of them, and could laugh at them. To show them that they were nothing, that they were not men. To make them into clowns. This made it easier for the SS to kill them - it's much easier to kill if it's not a human being that must be honored.
What about the sculpture of the man with the baby carriage?
Ada: You know that the Germans had a special department, the Flaschensortierungkommando. 21 Before the war there was no plastic, so everyone had glass bottles that they used in order to bring things with them - medicines, everything. And suddenly the Germans made a special work detail - a detail that collected all the bottles - they did this because glass remains in the earth and doesn't disintegrate for thousands of years...

Samuel: The Germans were afraid that someone would find all these bottles, in the middle of the forest, and get suspicious: where did so many bottles come from? So the Germans made a new department to clean up all the glass.
What is the sculpture of the man without the leg?
Ada: This sculpture is of a German war veteran from WWI who lost his leg. He thought that if he came to Treblinka with all his medals, that he'd get some kind of special treatment, but they killed him just like they killed all the other Jews - they killed him in the Lazarett with a bullet because he couldn't walk.
And the sculpture of the stretcher?
This is the group that had to clean the cattle cars - they took the corpses out of the trains at the time that the trains arrived. They were called the "Blues." 22
We are indebted to Samuel, and to Ada, for sharing their time and their insights with us and for allowing us to see Samuel's wonderful sculptures, which bring the scenes of Treblinka back to life.

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Interview with Samuel Willenberg, Survivor of the Treblinka Death Camp

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Sheryl Silver Ochayon My colleague Liz Elsby and I sat down to interview Samuel Willenberg on Sunday, December 4, 2011 in his apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel. His wife, Ada, herself a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, sat with us, plied us with tea and pastries, and added to our knowledge and to the discussion.

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"Up to 70,000 people were brought to Treblinka every day"

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Commandant of Treblinka

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Jews on the platform, leaving the cattlecar in Treblinka (2000)

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Pictured from left to right are: Abraham Kolski, Lachman and Brenner. 

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These three were some of the few to escape Treblinka during the revolt by the Jews.

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Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

Transcript

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Abraham Lewent describes hiding during a raid in which his mother and sisters were seiz...

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Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto.

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They are believed to be the last two survivors of the most chillingly efficient killing machine of the Nazi Holocaust: the Treblinka extermination camp in occupied Poland.

Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, 87-year-old Israelis, are devoting their final years to trying to preserve the memory of the 875,000 people systematically murdered in a one-year killing spree at the height of World War II. Almost all of them were Jews.

Only 67 people are known to have survived the camp, fleeing in a brazen revolt shortly before Treblinka was destroyed. Following the recent death of a prominent chronicler, Israel's national Holocaust memorial says the two Israeli men are now the final living link to one of the most notorious death camps in human history.

"The world cannot forget Treblinka," said Willenberg.

"Soon there will be no one left to tell," added Taigman.

Treblinka holds a notorious place in history as perhaps the most vivid example of the "Final Solution," the Nazi plot to rid Europe of Jews.

Along with the lesser known Belzec and Sobibor camps, it was designed with the sole intention of exterminating Jews, and Treblinka was by far the deadliest. Victims, transported there in cattle cars, were gassed to death almost immediately upon arrival.

Only a select few - mostly young, strong men like Willenberg and Taigman, who were both 20 at the time- were spared an immediate trip to the gas chambers and assigned to maintenance work instead.

On Aug. 2, 1943, a group of Jews stole some weapons, set fire to the camp and headed to the woods. Hundreds fled, but most were shot and killed by Nazi troops in the surrounding mine fields or captured by Polish villagers who returned them to Treblinka.

The survivors became the only source of knowledge about Treblinka, because the Nazis all but destroyed it in a frantic bid to cover their tracks.

Willenberg said he was shot in the leg as he climbed over bodies piled at the barbed wire fence and catapulted over. He kept running, ignoring dead friends in his path. He said his blue eyes and "non-Jewish" look allowed him to survive in the countryside before arriving in Warsaw and joining the Polish underground.

Later in life, he took to sculpturing to describe his experiences. His bronze statues reflect what he saw - Jews standing on a train platform, a father removing his son's shoes before entering the gas chambers, a young girl having her head shaved, prisoners removing bodies.

"I live two lives, one is here and now and the other is what happened there," Willenberg said in an interview at his Tel Aviv apartment. "It never leaves me. It stays in my head. It goes with me always."

His two sisters were murdered there. He described his survival as "chance, sheer chance," choking back tears. "It wasn't because of God. He wasn't there. He was on vacation."

In all, the Nazis and their collaborators killed about 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. The death toll at Treblinka was second only to Auschwitz - a prison camp where more than a million people died in gas chambers or from starvation, disease and forced labor.

Taigman said he recalls the uprising vividly, and that resisting the Germans was a "dream" for the prisoners.

He entered Treblinka holding the hand of his mother, who was quickly pulled away from him and murdered. He left watching a Nazi flag burning in the distance from a blaze they had set - a small piece of revenge after nearly a year of torment.

"It was hell, absolutely hell," said Taigman, who lives in a retirement home south of Tel Aviv. "A normal man cannot imagine how a living person could have lived through it - killers, natural-born killers, who without a trace of remorse just murdered every little thing."

Taigman, who wandered in the Polish countryside for nearly a year after his escape, said his most lasting memory of Treblinka is fellow prisoners who had to remove bodies - often their own relatives - from gas chambers.

Treblinka holds such a powerful grip on the Jewish psyche that the will of a recently deceased Holocaust survivor in Israel instructed her children to cremate her body and sprinkle her ashes at the Polish memorial site - so that she could finally be reunited with her relatives who perished there.

After the war, Willenberg and Taigman made their ways to Israel, where they pursued careers and raised families. Willenberg became a surveyor in Israel's Housing Ministry, while Taigman was an importer. The survivors have maintained their special connection, meeting each other often over the years.

David Silberklang, a senior historian at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, said that in contrast to other camps where Jews were also used for industrial labor, Treblinka truly represented the essence of the Nazi Final Solution.

"Treblinka had nothing, just killing, and they almost finished the job. These camps left us almost nothing," he said.

Without the survivors, he said "it would just be a black hole, we would know nothing. With them, we know quite a lot," he said.

One of the men most responsible for documenting the atrocities was Eliahu Rosenberg, who was tasked with removing bodies from gas chambers and dumping them into giant pits. He passed away in September, but before his death recounted his experiences in a video testimony to Yad Vashem.

"It poisoned, choked people within 25 minutes, all would suffocate. It was terrible to hear the screaming of the women and the children. They cried: "Mama!" "Tata! (Dad)" but in a few minutes they choked to death," he said.

"The crematoriums were train rails which lay on a concrete base. On them were wood planks, we called it 'grills.' We threw the body parts onto those 'grills,' and with a match everything burnt. And we stood there ... and it burned all night, all night long."

After the revolt, the Nazis attempted to destroy all evidence of their atrocities. The camp structures were destroyed, the ground plowed and planted over. Today, all the remains at the site are a series of concrete slabs representing the train tracks, and mounds of gravel with a memorial of stone tablets representing lost communities.

The two remaining survivors have returned to lead tours of the site. Taigman made the trip just one time, saying it was too painful to go back again, while Willenberg has gone on several occasions, most recently last week.

"There are only two of us left. After we go, there will be nothing," said Willenberg. "All I will leave behind are my sculptures and most importantly, my daughter and my grandchildren."

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Only 2 survivors remain from Nazi camp Treblinka

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They are believed to be the last two survivors of the most chillingly efficient killing machine of the Nazi Holocaust: the Treblinka extermination camp in occupied Poland. Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, 87-year-old Israelis, are devoting their final years to trying to preserve the memory of the 875,000 people systematically murdered in a one-year killing spree at the height of World War II.

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There are still Treblinka survivors living. One tells his tale

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Now in Sweden, 89-year-old Leon ‘Poldek’ Rytz remains active in spreading his tale of survival in the face of genocide

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"The killing center Treblinka II begins operations." "...deport around 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto..."

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Treblinka
November 1, 1939 - September 1943
Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler appoints SS general Odilo Globocnik SS and Police Leader in Lublin District on November 1, 1939. On July 17, 1941, Himmler appoints Globocnik Commissioner for the Establishment of SS and Police Bases in the Occupied Eastern Territories. In early autumn of that year, Himmler tasks Globocnik with organizing the mass murder of Jews residing in the Generalgouvernement (that part of German-occupied Poland not annexed directly to Germany, attached to German East Prussia, or incorporated within the German-occupied Soviet Union). This operation later becomes known as Operation Reinhard (also called Aktion Reinhard), named after Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. Three killing centers- Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II -are constructed for the sole purpose of killing Jews. Between March 1942 and November 1943, the personnel of Operation Reinhard kill approximately 1.7 million Jews in these three killing centers and related shooting operations.

November 15, 1941
Under the authority of the SS and Police Leader for the district of Warsaw, the SS establish a labor camp not far from Malkinia, a village located about 50 miles northeast of Warsaw in the northern region of the Generalgouvernement.

July 19, 1942
In Lublin, Himmler meets with Operation Reinhard manager Odilo Globocnik and with Friedrich-Wilhelm Krueger, the Higher SS and Police Leader for the Generalgouvernement. They discuss the killing operations. Himmler ordered the "resettlement"-a euphemism for deportation and murder-of all Jews in the Generalgouvernement by the end of 1942. An estimated 1,200,000 Jews reside in the Generalgouvernement. Himmler's order accelerates the killing program.

July 23, 1942
The killing center Treblinka II begins operations. With the arrival of the first transports of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto, SS and police officials begin the killing operations. From July until September 5, 1942, SS and police personnel deport around 265,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka II. The camp authorities gas or shoot most of them on arrival.

August 5, 1942 - November 1942
The SS and police begin deportations from Radom District in the Generalgouvernement to Treblinka II. By late autumn, SS and police personnel deport around 346,000 Polish Jews from the Radom District, as well as approximately 33,300 from the Lublin District. The killing center authorities kill almost all of these deportees upon their arrival in the camp.

August 28, 1942
Odilo Globocnik temporarily halts deportations to Treblinka II. The camp gas chamber continually broke down and the burial pits were overflowing with bodies. The SS resorts to shooting incoming Jews in the arrival area of the camp and piling bodies throughout the camp. In August, Globocnik orders SS Captain Franz Stangl, commandant of Sobibor, to replace SS 2nd Lieutenant Dr. Irmfried Eberl as commandant of Treblinka. Stangl restores order in the camp and supervises the building of new gas chambers, which are operational in early autumn 1942. Transports of Warsaw and Radom Jews begin to arrive again in September 1942.

October 5, 1942
The first of five deportation trains depart from the Theresienstadt ghetto in the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia for Treblinka II. The SS established the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1941, ostensibly as place of "resettlement" for elderly and prominent Jews from the Greater German Reich and from western Europe. One of its purposes, however, was to serve as a transit camp for deportations to the east. During this month, the SS deports nearly 8,000 Jews from Theresienstadt to Treblinka II; killing center personnel shoot or gas almost all of the deportees upon their arrival.

October 15, 1942 - February 1943
The SS and police deport Jews from ghettos in Bialystok District (that part of German-occupied Poland attached administratively to the German province of East Prussia) to Treblinka II. By mid-February 1943 the SS had deported over 110,000 Jews from this district to Treblinka II-including 10,000 from Bialystok itself. Treblinka II authorities kill most of the Jews upon arrival in the facility and select a few hundred for transfer as forced laborers to Treblinka I.

March 11, 1943
Bulgarian military and police authorities transferred 11,343 Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Thrace, Macedonia, and (Serbian) Pirot to German custody pursuant to a February agreement between the SS and representatives of the Bulgarian government. German SS and police officials transported these Jews to Treblinka II, where almost all were gassed or shot upon arrival.

August 2, 1943
Deportations and gassing operations halt at Treblinka. On this date, prisoners used for forced labor-fearing that the SS will soon kill them-stage a revolt. Prisoners seize weapons from the camp armory, but SS guards in the camp discover the plot before it can be completely implemented. Hundreds of prisoners nevertheless storm the main gate in an attempt to escape. SS and police guards kill many with machine-gun fire. More than 300 prisoners escape, but the SS and police personnel eventually recapture and kill two thirds of them.

August 19, 1943
The SS and police personnel deport some 7,600 Jewish survivors of the Bialystok ghetto uprising to Treblinka II, killing all of them upon arrival. In all, between 870,000 and 925,000 people were killed in Treblinka II.

The SS guards force the surviving prisoners in the camp to remove all remaining traces of the camp's existence. The SS then shoot the remaining prisoners. Treblinka II is dismantled in the fall of 1943.

November 4, 1943 - January 5, 1944
In correspondence with SS chief Heinrich Himmler, Odilo Globocnik files the final reports on the conclusion of Operation Reinhard, the dismantling of the killing centers, and the accounting of the personal possessions, currency, and valuables stolen from the murdered victims. Within the framework of Operation Reinhard, which included three killing centers and a number of mass shootings , the SS and police killed approximately 1.7 million people.

Last Edited: May 17, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Treblinka November 1, 1939 - September 1943 Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler appoints SS general Odilo Globocnik SS and Police Leader in Lublin District on November 1, 1939. On July 17, 1941, Himmler appoints Globocnik Commissioner for the Establishment of SS and Police Bases in the Occupied Eastern Territories.

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About 379,300 people were deported from ghettos to Treblinka; many were killed on arrival.
(Picture: "Jews from Macedonia board deportation trains")