Treblinka
Extermination camp
Symbolic concrete blocks mark the path of the former railway line at Treblinka
Location of Treblinka in Poland
Coordinates	52°37′51.85″N 22°3′11.01″E / 52.6310694°N 22.0530583°E / 52.6310694; 22.0530583Coordinates: 52°37′51.85″N 22°3′11.01″E / 52.6310694°N 22.0530583°E / 52.6310694; 22.0530583
Known for	Genocide during The Holocaust
Location	Near Treblinka, German-occupied Poland
Built by	Richard Wolfgang Thomalla (death camp) Erwin Hermann Lambert (gas chambers) Christian Wirth Schoenbronn Company, Leipzig Schmidt und Muenstermann, Warsaw[1][2]
Operated by	SS-Totenkopfverbände
Original use	Death
First built	April 1942 — July 1942
Operational	22 July 1942 — 19 October 1943[3]
Number of gas chambers	6
Inmates	mainly Jews
Number of inmates	est. 1,200
Killed	est. 870,000 — 1.4 million
Liberated by	closed before end of war
Notable inmates	Richard Glazar, Martin Gray, Janusz Korczak, Sol Rosenberg, Jankiel Wiernik
Notable books	A Year in Treblinka, Into That Darkness

Treblinka (Polish pronunciation: [trɛˈblʲinka]) was a Nazi extermination camp^[4] in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between 01942-07-23July 23, 1942 and 01943-10-19October 19, 1943.^[3] During this time, approximately 870,000 men, women and children were killed at Treblinka.^[5] This figure includes more than 800,000 Jews, as well as an undetermined number of Romani people.^[6]

The camp, which was operated by the SS and Eastern European Trawnikis, consisted of Treblinka I and II. The first camp was a forced-labour center. Inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area. Between June 1941 and July 23, 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment.

Treblinka II was designed as a death factory. The small number who were not killed immediately became Sonderkommandos.^[7] These slave labor groups were forced to bury the victims' bodies in mass graves. Later corpses were burned on massive open-air pyres.

Killing operations at Treblinka II were ended on 01943-10-19October 19, 1943, following a revolt by its Sonderkommandos. Several German guards were killed when 300 prisoners escaped.^[8] The camp was then dismantled and a farmhouse was built in an attempt to hide the evidence of genocide.^[9] In addition, killing facilities were developed in Auschwitz II-Birkenau within the already existing camp (Auschwitz I). Operation Reinhard was overseen by SS-Obergruppenführer Odilo Globocnik in occupied Poland as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's deputy. Unlike other Nazi concentration camps, Operation Reinhard camps reported directly to the RSHA, which in turn reported directly to Heinrich Himmler. Himmler kept the control of the program close to him but delegated the work to Globocnik. Operation Reinhard used the forced euthanasia program (Action T4) for site selection, construction and the training of personnel.^[10]

The camp[link]

Nazi extermination camps in occupied Poland (marked with black and white skulls)

The camp of Treblinka was located 100 kilometres (62 mi) northeast of the Polish capital Warsaw,^[11] near the village of Małkinia Górna, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) from the Treblinka railroad station.^[12] It was conveniently located approximately halfway between the Warsaw and Białystok Ghettos. The camp was organized in two subdivisions: Treblinka I and Treblinka II.

Treblinka I[link]

Treblinka I was a forced labour camp located 2 km to the south of the extermination camp. Treblinka I operated between June 1941 and July 23, 1944. In this time half of the 20,000 inmates died from execution, exhaustion, or mistreatment. Treblinka I inmates worked in either the nearby gravel pit or irrigation area.^[13]

Treblinka II[link]

Treblinka II, the extermination camp, was divided into three parts, covering in total an area measuring 600 metres by 400 metres (1,968 feet by 1,312 feet). The first part was the administrative section, which included barracks for the SS-Totenkopfverbände and Ukrainian guards, the camp commanders' quarters, a bakery, a storage and barracks for up to 800 prisoners, who were used to operate the camp. A road left this part of the camp and rejoined the highway.

The second section of Treblinka II (lower camp) was the receiving area where the railroad extended from the Treblinka station into the camp. There were two barracks near the tracks that were used to store the belongings of prisoners; one was disguised to look like a railway station, complete with a wooden clock.^[14] There were two other buildings about 100 metres (328 feet) from the track. All of the buildings were used to contain the clothing and belongings of the prisoners. One was used as an undressing room for the women, who were also shorn of all of their hair. There was a cashier's office, which collected money and jewellery for "safekeeping". There was also an "infirmary", where the sick, old, wounded, and already dead were taken. It was a small barracks, painted white with a red cross on it. There, the prisoners were led to the edge of a ditch where bodies were continuously burning. They had to strip naked and then sit in the edge of the pit before they were shot in the back of the head. Then they fell in the ditch and burned.

A memorial at Treblinka. Each stone represents a Jewish town or city, the population of which was exterminated at the camp

The third section of Treblinka II, the upper camp or death camp, was on a small hill. From the lower camp there was an uphill path, cynically called Himmelstraße ("the Road to Heaven") by the SS, which was lined with barbed wire fences — der Schlauch ("the tube") — and which led directly into the gas chambers. Behind this building there was a large pit, 1 metre wide by 20 metres long, inside which fires burned. Rails were laid across the pit and the bodies of gassed victims were placed on the rails to burn. There was also a barracks for the prisoners who operated the upper camp.

Organization of the camp[link]

Sketch plan of Treblinka extermination camp, made by commandant Franz Stangl

The camp was operated by 20–25 SS overseers (Germans and Austrians) and 80–120 guards. The historical records show that the Treblinka camp guards were of varied ethnic groups and nationalities, comprising not only Germans (Volksdeutsche)^[15][16] but also a number of Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Moldovans, Latvians, and representatives of Soviet Central Asia (including a number of collaborating Soviet prisoners of war). Among them served former Red Army soldiers Ivan Marchenko and Nikolay Shaleyev.^[17]

The majority of the camp work was performed on a forced basis by 700–800 Jewish prisoners, organised into specialised squads (Sonderkommandos). The blue squad was responsible for unloading the train, carrying the luggage and cleaning the wagons. The red squad had the task of undressing the passengers and taking their clothes to the storage areas. The Geldjuden ("money Jews") were in charge of handling the money, gold, stocks, and jewellery. They were forced to search the prisoners just before they went into the gas chamber. Another, the dentist, would open the mouths of the dead and pull out gold teeth. Another group, dubbed the Totenjuden ("the Jews of death"), lived in Treblinka II and were forced to carry the dead from the gas chamber to the furnaces, sift through the ashes of the dead, grind up recognisable parts, and bury the ashes in pits.^[18] Yet another group took care of the upkeep of the camp. Lastly, the camouflage Kommando went every day into the forest and gathered branches to camouflage the camp and the "funnel" by weaving branches in the barbed wires.^[19] The work squads prisoners were continuously whipped and beaten by the guards and were often killed. New workers (usually the most healthy people) were selected from the daily arrivals and pressed into the commandos.

There was a bruise rule: if a prisoner had been bruised on the face, he would be shot that evening at roll call, or the next morning if the bruise first began to show then.^{[citation needed]} Many prisoners, in utter despair at the horrible deaths of their families and unwilling to go on living, committed suicide by hanging themselves in the sleeping barracks with their belts.^[20] Normally, the work crews were almost entirely replaced every 3–5 days, with the members of the old crew being sent to their deaths. 90% of the inmates sent to Treblinka died within the first 2 hours of arriving.

Timeline of Treblinka II[link]

History of the camp[link]

Before Operation Reinhard, over half a million Jews had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination units, in territories conquered by the German army. It became evident, however, that they could not handle the millions of Jews that they had concentrated in the ghettos of occupied countries. So Treblinka, along with the other Operation Reinhard camps, were especially designed for the rapid elimination of the Jews in ghettos. Treblinka was ready on 24 July 1942, when the shipping of Jews began: "According to the SS Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop report, a total of approximately 310,000 Jews were transported in freight trains from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka during the period from 22 July to 3 October 1942."^[21]

Irmfried Eberl[link]

Irmfried Eberl presided as the camp's first commandant on 01942-07-11July 11, 1942. Eberl was a psychiatrist, and the only physician to ever command an extermination camp.

The camp received its first shipment of victims, 6,500 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, on 01942-07-22July 22, 1942. The gas chambers became operational the following day, 01942-07-23July 23, 1942. Shipments continued on a daily basis thereafter, usually ranging from about 4,000 to 7,000 victims per day, Jews from the ghettos of Poland, mainly Warsaw, most of whom were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Hundreds of the prisoners died from starvation, dehydration or suffocation while in transit to the camp in the cramped rail cars.

Eberl's poor organizational skills soon caused the operation of Treblinka to turn disastrous. At the very beginning, the corpses were buried in mass graves, but within days the burial pits were overflowing with bodies, and corpses were instead piled up in camp II because the workers did not have proper time to bury them. At the same time, the gas chambers continually broke down. Therefore, the SS resorted to shooting incoming Jews in the arrival area of the camp and piling bodies throughout the camp.^[8]

According to SS-Unterscharführer Hans Hingst:

Dr. Eberl's ambition was to reach the highest possible numbers and exceed all the other camps. So many transports arrived that the disembarkation and gassing of the people could no longer be handled.^[22][23]

The stench from the decomposing bodies could be smelled up to 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away, such as at the nearby village of Treblinka, Masovian Voivodeship. It was evident that large scale killings were happening nearby, which caused concern among the villagers.^[7] The village of Treblinka was not complicit in the events at the Treblinka extermination camp, but rather a bystander.^{[citation needed]} On incoming train convoys to Treblinka, many of the soon-to-be-murdered Jews waiting in the railway wagons correctly guessed what would happen to them based upon the stench; thousands instead chose suicide in the trains over death at the hands of the Nazis.

Oskar Berger, a Jewish eyewitness, tells of the camp's state in August 1942:

...all over the place there were hundreds of human bodies. Piles of packages, clothes, suitcases, everything in a mess. German and Ukrainian SS men stood at the corners of the barracks and were shooting blindly into the crowd...^[24]

Changes in leadership[link]

The Nazi hierarchy swiftly responded to these problems by developing a more efficient, more concealed, more sophisticated system of mass murder. On August 26, 1942, Odilo Globocnik, the head of Operation Reinhard, visited Treblinka along with Christian Wirth and Josef Oberhauser. Irmfried Eberl was immediately relieved of his duties. Among the reasons for his dismissal:^[7]

1. for incompetence in disposing of the bodies of the tens of thousands of people who had been killed.
2. for not killing people in an efficient and timely enough manner.
3. for not properly concealing the mass murder from locals.
4. for being part of a ring at the camp that was stealing the possessions of the people who had been murdered and sending them back to cohorts at Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. This last activity had been expressly forbidden by Heinrich Himmler, as he had wanted this property to be contributed to the German war effort.^[25]

Christian Wirth was ordered to temporarily move in to Treblinka to help clean up Eberl's mess. On August 28, Globocnik temporarily suspended deportations to Treblinka. Globocnik chose Franz Stangl, who had previously been the Commandant of Sobibor extermination camp, to assume command of Treblinka as Eberl's successor. Stangl had a reputation as a highly competent administrator and people manager with an excellent grasp of detail, and therefore Globocnik trusted that Stangl would be capable of restoring order at Treblinka.^[1]

On September 1, Franz Stangl replaced Irmfried Eberl as Commandant of Treblinka. When Stangl arrived at the camp, he was appalled at the disorganized, disheveled state of the camp. He described Treblinka when he first came to the death camp while it was still under Eberl's command:

I drove there, with an SS driver....We could smell it kilometers away. The road ran alongside the railway tracks. As we got nearer Treblinka but still perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes' drive away, we began to see corpses next to the rails, first just two or three, then more and as we drove into what was Treblinka station, there were hundreds of them – just lying there – they'd obviously been there for days, in the heat. In the station was a train full of Jews, some dead, some still alive – it looked as if it had been there for days.
When I entered the camp and got out of the car on the square I stepped knee-deep into money; I didn't know which way to turn, where to go. I waded in notes, currency, precious stones, jewelry, clothes... The smell was indescribable; the hundreds, no, the thousands of bodies everywhere, decomposing, putrefying. Across the square in the woods, just a few hundred yards away on the other side of the barbed-wire fence and all around the perimeter of the camp, there were tents and open fires with groups of Ukrainian guards and girls – whores from Warsaw I found out later – weaving, drunk, dancing, singing, playing music – Dr Eberl, the Kommandant showed me around the camp, there was shooting everywhere ... .^[25]

Franz Stangl[link]

Franz Stangl restored order in the camp, and the transports of Warsaw and Radom Jews began to arrive again on September 3, 1942.^[8] Stangl wanted his camp to look attractive, so he ordered the paths paved and flowers planted along the sides of Seidel Street, near camp headquarters and SS living quarters.^[26] The appearance of Treblinka concealed the deadly fate that awaited arriving prisoners.

Stangl liked to wear a white uniform and carry a whip, and so he was nicknamed "The White Death" by prisoners. Despite being directly responsible for the camp's operations, Stangl limited his contact with Jewish prisoners as much as possible. Stangl rarely interfered with unusually cruel acts perpetrated by his subordinate officers at the camp. He claimed that his dedication had nothing to do with ideology or hatred of Jews.^[27] Stangl accepted and grew accustomed to the killings, perceiving prisoners not as humans but merely as "cargo" that must be destroyed. Stangl accepted the extermination of the Jews as a fact. Stangl is quoted as saying:

To tell the truth, one did become used to it...they were cargo. I think it started the day I first saw the Totenlager [extermination area] in Treblinka. I remember Wirth standing there, next to the pits full of black-blue corpses. It had nothing to do with humanity — it could not have. It was a mass — a mass of rotting flesh. Wirth said 'What shall we do with this garbage?' I think unconsciously that started me thinking of them as cargo....I rarely saw them as individuals. It was always a huge mass. I sometimes stood on the wall and saw them in the "tube" — they were naked, packed together, running, being driven with whips....^[26]

Kurt Franz[link]

Instead, the man most responsible for day-to-day interactions with the prisoners was Kurt Franz. These interactions are described in depth in his article.

The Treblinka song[link]

As reported by lower-ranking SS officers and soldiers, Franz, one of the commanding officers of the camp, wrote lyrics to a song which celebrated the Treblinka extermination camp. This song was taught to the few newly arriving Jews who were not killed immediately, who were instead forced to work as slave laborers at the camp (known as Sonderkommandos). These Jews were forced to memorize the song by nightfall of their first day at the camp. The melody for the song came from an SS officer at Buchenwald concentration camp. The music was written in a happy way, as though the deaths at the camp were a joyful process rather than one of mourning, in the key of D major. Franz's lyrics for the song are listed below:

Looking squarely ahead, brave and joyous, at the world. The squads march to work. All that matters to us now is Treblinka. It is our destiny. That's why we've become one with Treblinka in no time at all. We know only the word of our Commander. We know only obedience and duty. We want to serve, to go on serving until little luck ends it all. Hurray!

• Lyrics by Kurt Hubert Franz
• Testimony of SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) Franz Suchomel, who worked at Treblinka.^[28]

New gas chambers[link]

In September 1942, Stangl supervised the building of new, larger gas chambers to augment the previously existing gas chambers. The new gas chambers became operational in early autumn 1942. It is believed that these death chambers were capable of killing 3,000 people in two hours, and 12,000 to 15,000 victims every day,^[1] with a maximum capacity of 22,000 deaths in 24 hours.^[29]

Extermination[link]

Treblinka memorial stone for Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. More than 310,000 people were sent from Warsaw to Treblinka in just over three months

Nazi timetable for a "special resettlement train" (Umsiedlersonderzug) from Lukow to Siedlce to Treblinka, August 1942

Arriving by train, victims were pulled from the train, separated by sex, and ordered to strip naked. In winter, the temperature often dropped to –20 °C (–5 °F). The guards chose who would go to the "infirmary". Jews who were too resistant to the process were taken to the infirmary and shot. Women had their hair cut off before going into the gas chamber.^[14][28] This hair was used "in the manufacture of hair-yarn socks for 'U'-boat crews and hair-felt foot-wear for the Reichs-railway", to quote from a directive sent to all concentration camp commanders in 1942.^[30]

The newly arrived Jews, particularly the men, were beaten incessantly with whips in order to drive them towards the gas chambers. According to testimony of SS officers, men were always gassed first from the transports, while women and children waited outside the gas chamber for their turn. During this time, the women and children could hear the sounds of suffering from inside the gas chamber, and they became well aware of the fate that awaited them, which naturally caused panic and distress, and involuntary defecation.^[28]

An entire train transport of people could be killed in a matter of two or three hours.^[28]

Gas chambers: exhaust instead of gas[link]

The gas chamber had portholes through which it was possible to view the death of the victims.^[14] The victims were gassed with carbon monoxide generated by diesel engines.^[31] There is some historical debate over whether these engines were diesel or petrol. The engines were those of Soviet Red Army tanks that had been captured during the war, and subsequently transported to Treblinka by the Nazis.^{[citation needed]} Most Red Army tanks from this period in time had diesel engines.

This killing process differed significantly from the process at Auschwitz and Majdanek, where the poisonous gas Zyklon B was used. At Sobibor and Belzec, exhaust fumes from petrol engines were used. The victims died from suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning. This also means that, frequently, victims were not completely dead as a result of the exhaust. The few prisoners who had worked in the Sonderkommandos and survived the camp later testified that victims frequently let out a final gasp of breath from their lungs when they were extracted from the gas chambers.

After the suffocation of the victims in the gas chamber, when the doors of the gas chamber were opened, "the disfigured, bitten prisoners, with ears torn off, lay on top of each other in the most varied posture." The bodies were initially buried in large mass graves; in a later stage of the camp's operation, they were burned on open-air grids made of concrete pillars and railway tracks. Sometimes, the people were not dead and began to revive in the fresh air, especially pregnant women. They were shot by the guards and burned like the others. Some 800–1,000 bodies were burned at the same time, and would burn for five hours. The incinerator operated 24 hours a day.^[32]

The killing centres had no other function, unlike concentration camps, in which prisoners were used as forced labour for the German war effort. In order to prevent incoming victims from realising their fate, the camp was disguised as a railway station, complete with train schedules, posters of destinations, and what appeared to be a working clock (in reality, a prisoner would move the hands to the approximate time before each convoy arrived).^[33] The camp and the process of mass murder is described by Vasily Grossman, a military reporter serving in the Red Army, in his work A Hell Called Treblinka, which was used as evidence and distributed at the Nuremberg Trials.

A simulation of the cremation pits used during Treblinka extermination camp's operation

Cremation pits[link]

Within the compounds of the Treblinka extermination camp, there were two cremation pits used to incinerate bodies. The bodies were placed on grates and burned whole within the wood and ash. These pits were roughly located just east of the new gas chambers. The camp memorial has recreated a simulation of the "extermination pits" using melted basalt and stone which is placed on a concrete fundamental plate. The bodies that were previously buried during the camp's operation were dug up and cremated pending the orders of Heinrich Himmler after he had visited the camp in 1943.^[34]

Resistance[link]

On September 11, 1942, camp guard Max Biala was stabbed to death by inmate Meir Berliner.

On August 2, 1943, the prisoners in the work details rebelled. They seized small arms, sprayed kerosene on all the buildings and set them ablaze. A number of guards were killed but many more prisoners perished. Of 1,500 prisoners, about 600 managed to escape the camp, but only 40 are known to have survived until the end of the war. There was also a revolt at Sobibor two months later.

One year after the revolt, Treblinka ceased operation. Camp commander Kurt Franz recalled during his testimonies: "After the uprising in August 1943 I ran the camp single-handedly for a year; however, during that period no gassings were undertaken. It was during that period that the original camp was levelled off and lupins were planted."^[35] The camp had been badly damaged during the uprising, and the murder of the Polish Jews was also largely complete. It was decided to shoot the last of the Jewish prisoners and shut down the camp.^[36] Odilo Globocnik wrote to Himmler: "I have (on October 19, 1944), completed Operation Reinhard, and have dissolved all the camps."^[37] The final group of about 30 Jewish girls at Treblinka was shot at the end of November.

Aftermath[link]

In 1965, after a report by Dr. Helmut Krausnick, director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, the Court of Assize in Düsseldorf concluded that the minimum number of people killed in Treblinka was 700,000.^[38] In 1969, the same court, after new evidence revealed in a report by expert Dr. Wolfgang Scheffler, reassessed the number to be 900,000.^[38] According to the Germans and the guards who were stationed in Treblinka, the figure ranges from 1 million to 1.4 million.^{[citation needed]} According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the death toll in the gas chambers of Treblinka II (not including the deaths from forced labor in Camp I) falls in the range of 870,000 to 925,000.^[8] It is somewhat difficult to assess exactly the number of those killed, but the approximate number can be established on the basis of the Höfle telegram (see next paragraph) and surviving transport documentation. Since 2010, the site is being examined with non-invasive archeological technology.^[39]

Höfle Telegram[link]

The Höfle Telegram

In 2001, a copy of a decrypted telegram sent by the deputy commander of Operation Reinhard was discovered among recently declassified information in Britain.^[40] The Höfle Telegram listed 713,555 Jews killed in Treblinka up to the end of December 1942. On the basis of the telegram and additional data for 1943, Jacek Andrzej Młynarczyk estimates the minimum death toll as 780,863.^[5]

Treblinka Trials[link]

The Austrian Franz Stangl was the commandant at Treblinka from the summer of 1942. In 1951, Stangl escaped to Brazil, where he found work at a Volkswagen factory in São Paulo. His role in the mass murder of men, women, and children was known to the Austrian authorities, but Austria did not issue a warrant for Stangl's arrest until 1961. In spite of his registration under his real name at the Austrian consulate in Brazil,^[41] it took another six years before he was tracked down by Simon Wiesenthal and arrested in Brazil. After extradition to West Germany he was tried for the deaths of around 900,000 people. He admitted to these killings but argued: "My conscience is clear. I was simply doing my duty." Found guilty on 22 October 1970, Stangl was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died of heart failure in prison in Düsseldorf on 28 June 1971.

Chain of command[link]

Organizers of the camp[link]

• Odilo Lotario Globocnik, SS-Hauptsturmführer (at the time) (Captain) and SS-Polizeiführer (SS Police Chief), Head of Operation Reinhard^[1][42][43]
• Hermann Julius Höfle, SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain), coordinator of Operation Reinhard^[43]
• Richard Wolfgang Thomalla, SS-Obersturmführer (at the time) (First Lieutenant), head of death camp construction during Operation Reinhard^[1][42][43]
• Erwin Hermann Lambert, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), head of gas chamber construction during Operation Reinhard (constructed large gas chambers)^[43][44]
• Christian Wirth, SS-Hauptsturmführer (at the time) (Captain), Inspector of Operation Reinhard^[1][43]

Commandant[link]

• Dr. Irmfried Eberl, SS-Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant), 01942-07-11July 11, 1942—01942-08-26August 26, 1942 (relieved of duty due to incompetence)^[1][42]
• Franz Paul Stangl, SS-Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant), 01942-09-01September 1, 1942—01943-08-01August 1943 (transferred from Commandant of Sobibor extermination camp)^[1][42]
• Kurt Hubert Franz, SS-Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant), 01943-08-01August 1943—01943-10-19October 19, 1943 (promoted from deputy commander after camp's revolt in August 1943)^[1][42][44]

Deputy commanders[link]

• Heinrich Arthur Matthes, SS-Scharführer (Sergeant), Deputy commandant, chief of the Totenlager (extermination area)^[44][45][46]
• Karl Pötzinger, Deputy commandant, head of cremation^[1][47]
• Theodor von Eupen, Commandant of Camp I (forced labor camp)^[1]

Executioners[link]

• Fritz Schmidt, SS-Sturmbannführer (Major), operated gas chambers^[1][45]
• Gustav Münzberger, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), operated gas chambers^[1][44]

Other officers[link]

• Max Biala — stabbed to death by prisoner Meir Berliner on September 11, 1942
• Paul Bredow, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal)^[42]
• Herbert Floss, SS-Scharführer (Sergeant)^[47]
• Erich Fritz Erhard Fuchs, SS-Scharführer (Sergeant)^[32][48]
• Lorenz Hackenholt, SS-Hauptscharführer (First Sergeant)
• Hans Hingst^[49][50]
• Josef Hirtreiter, SS-Scharführer (Sergeant)^[42][44]
• Otto Richard Horn, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), corpse detail^[44]
• Kurt Küttner, SS-Oberscharführer (Staff Sergeant), Lower Camp of Camp II^[44][51]
• Karl Emil Ludwig^[1][52]
• Willy Mätzig^[32]
• Willi Mentz, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), Lazaret/Infirmary^{[1][42][44][45]}
• August Wilhelm Miete, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), Lazaret/Infirmary^[1][44][47]
• Max Möller^[42]
• Willi Post, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), Head of Ukrainian Guard, Volksdeutsche/SS squad leaders^[1]
• Albert Franz Rum, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), gas chambers^[44]
• Karl Schiffer, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), command of twelve Ukrainians^[53]
• Otto Stadie, SS-Stabsscharführer (Staff Squad Leader), camp administration^[28][44]
• Ernst Stengelin, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal) — killed in revolt on October 14, 1943^[52]
• Franz Suchomel, SS-Unterscharführer (Corporal), "Goldjuden" supervisor^[1][28][44]

Guards[link]

Ukrainians[link]

• Ivan the Terrible (presumed Ukrainian)^[54][55]
• Feodor Fedorenko^[56]
• Ivan Ivanovich Marchenko^[1][47]

Russians[link]

• Nikolay Yegorovich Shalayev^[47]

Others[link]

• other Volksdeutsche and prisoners of war (90 to 120)^[1]

See also[link]

• Treblinka Trials
• List of Nazi-German concentration camps
• Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
• Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
• Shark Island Extermination Camp

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Court of Assizes in Düsseldorf, Germany. Excerpts From Judgments (Urteilsbegründung). AZ-LG Düsseldorf: II 931638, 1965. Online. ftp1.us.nizkor.org
• Arad, Yitzhak, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987. ISBN 0-253-34293-7
• Glazar, Richard. Trap with a Green Fence. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1999.
• Klee, Ernst., Dressen, W., Riess, V. The Good Old Days: the Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. New York: The Free Press, 1988. ISBN 1-56852-133-2
• Lanzmann, Claude, Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust. New York: Pantheon Books. 1985.
• The Nizkor Project. The Killing Centers. 1995. Online. Available: ftp1.us.nizkor.org
• Steiner, Jean-François; Trans. Helen Weaver (1967). Treblinka. New York: Simon and Schusters, Inc.. ISBN 0-452-01124-8. 
• Rückerl, Adalbert, hrsq. NS-Prozesse. Karlsruhe, Germany: Verlag C F Muller, 1972.
• "Treblinka." Encyclopedia Americana. Ed. unknown.
• United States Department of Justice. Excerpts from Interrogation of Defendant Pavel Vladimirovitch Lelenko. Original source: Directorate of Counterintelligence of the 2nd Belorussian Front, USSR. 1978. Acquired by US in 1994. Available online: nizkor.com, nizkor.com
• Originally based on writing by Christopher Mahan as a Pierce College English 101 assignment: christophermahan.com
• Sereny, Gitta Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience, 1983
• Vassily Grossman's article The Treblinka Hell (1944) was disseminated at the Nuremberg Trials as a document for the prosecution. (The original in Russian: Треблинский ад)
• Martin Gray (with Max Gallo), For Those I Loved, Little Brown Company, 1984, hardcover, ISBN 0-316-32576-7, 351 pages
• Testimony of Treblinka survivor Ya'akov Wiernik during the Adolf Eichmann trial: nizkor.org
• Höfle Telegram, Public Record Office, Kew, England, HW 16/23, decode GPDD 355a distributed on January 15, 1943, radio telegrams nos 12 and 13/15, transmitted on January 11, 1943.
• Smith, Mark S. (2010). Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling. The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5618-8. 

External links[link]

• The History of Treblinka on the Yad Vashem website
• Treblinka - About the Holocaust - Yad Vashem - Including Video Testimony of Treblinka Survivor Eliyahu Rosenberg

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Treblinka extermination camp

• Treblinka from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"
• Zchor.org, A year in Treblinka, eye-witness report by an escaped prisoner of the camp, Yankel Wiernik.
• Frontline - Treblinka
• Treblinka
• Treblinka Death Camp History
• (Polish) Treblinka II
• (Czech) Josef Gross: Přežil jsem (I survived)
• Interview (video) with Franz Suchomel (SS guard at Treblinka)
• Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard
• Gold Rush in Treblinka Translations of an article in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza

Janusz Korczak
Janusz Korczak
Born	July 22, 1879 (1878-07-22) Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire
Died	August 1942 (1942-09) Treblinka extermination camp
Occupation	Children's author, humanitarian, pediatrician and child pedagogue

Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit,^[1] (July 22, 1878 or 1879 – August 1942) was a Polish-Jewish educator, children's author, and pediatrician known as Pan Doktor (Mr. Doctor) or Stary Doktor (Old Doctor). After spending many years working as director of an orphanage in Warsaw, he refused freedom and stayed with his orphans when the institution was sent from the Ghetto to Treblinka extermination camp, during the Grossaktion Warsaw of 1942.^[2]

Biography[link]

Under foreign partitions[link]

Korczak was born in Warsaw in 1878 or 1879 (sources vary) into the family of Józef Goldszmit,^[1] a respected lawyer from a family of proponents of the haskalah,^[3] and Cecylia nee Gębicka, daughter of a prominent Kalisz family.^[4] His father fell ill around 1890 and was admitted to mental hospital where he died six years later in April 1896. Spacious apartments – first along Miodowa street, then Świętojerska – had to be given up. Henryk worked as a tutor after school.^[5] In 1898 he used Janusz Korczak as a writing pseudonym in the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Literary Contest. The name originated from the book Janasz Korczak and the Pretty Swordsweeperlady (O Janaszu Korczaku i pięknej Miecznikównie) by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski.^[6] In the 1890s he studied in the Flying University. During the years 1898–1904 Korczak studied medicine at the University of Warsaw and also wrote for several Polish language newspapers. After graduation he became a pediatrician. During the Russo-Japanese War in 1905–1906 he served as a military doctor. Meanwhile his book Child of the Drawing Room (Dziecko salonu) gained him some literary recognition. After the war he continued his practice in Warsaw.

The Krochmalna Street orphanage where Korczak worked. He lived in a room at the attic

In 1907–1908 Korczak went to study in Berlin. While working for the Orphan's Society in 1909 he met Stefania Wilczyńska, his future closest associate.^[7] In 1911–1912 he became a director of Dom Sierot in Warsaw, the orphanage of his own design for Jewish children. He took Wilczyńska as his assistant. There he formed a kind-of-a-republic for children with its own small parliament, court, and a newspaper. He reduced his other duties as a doctor. Some of his descriptions of the summer camp for Jewish children in this period and subsequently, were later published in his Fragmenty Utworów and have been translated into English.

During World War One, in 1917 Korczak became a military doctor with the rank of Lieutenant. He served again as a military doctor in the Polish Army with the rank of Major during the Polish-Soviet War, but after a brief stint in Łódź was assigned to Warsaw.

Sovereign Poland[link]

In 1926 Korczak arranged for the children of the Dom Sierot to begin their own newspaper, the Mały Przegląd (Little Review), as a weekly attachment to the daily Polish-Jewish Newspaper Nasz Przegląd (Our Review). In these years, his secretary was the noted Polish novelist Igor Newerly.

During the 1930s he had his own radio program where he promoted and popularized the rightes of children. In 1933 he was awarded the Silver Cross of the Polonia Restituta. Between 1934–1936 Korczak traveled every year to Mandate Palestine and visited its kibbutzim, which led to some anti-semitic commentaries in the Polish press. It additionally spurred his estrangement with the non-Jewish orphanage he had also been working for. Still, he refused to move to Palestine even when Stefania Wilczyńska went to live there in 1938.

The Holocaust[link]

In 1939, when World War II erupted, Korczak volunteered for duty in the Polish Army but was refused due to his age. He witnessed the Wehrmacht takeover of Warsaw. When the Germans created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, his orphanage was forced to move from its building, Dom Sierot at Krochmalna 92 to the Ghetto (first to Chłodna 33 and later to Sienna 16 / Śliska 9).^[8] Korczak moved in with them. In July, Janusz Korczak decided that the children in the orphanage should put on Rabindranath Tagore’s play, The Post Office.

Janusz Korczak and the children, memorial at Yad Vashem

Monument of Korczak at Warsaw

On August 5 or 6, 1942, German soldiers came to collect the 192 orphans (there is some debate about the actual number: it may have been 196), and about one dozen staff members, to transport them to Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” by Żegota but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. On August 5, he again refused offers of sanctuary, insisting that he would go with the children.

The children were dressed in their best clothes, and each carried a blue knapsack and a favorite book or toy. Joshua Perle, an eyewitness, described the procession of Korczak and the children through the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz (deportation point to the death camps):

... Two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Janusz Korczak, so that he might protect and preserve them. Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes, as they were being carried to the altar.

— Joshua Perle,  Holocaust cronicles ^[9]

According to a popular legend, when the group of orphans finally reached the Umschlagplatz, an SS officer recognized Korczak as the author of one of his favorite children's books and offered to help him escape. By another version, the officer was acting officially, as the Nazi authorities had in mind some kind of "special treatment" for Korczak (some prominent Jews with international reputations got sent to Theresienstadt). Whatever the offer, Korczak once again refused. He boarded the trains with the children and was never heard from again.

Korczak's evacuation from the Ghetto is also mentioned in Władysław Szpilman's book The Pianist:

I happened to see Janusz Korczak and his orphans leaving the ghetto. The evacuation of the Jewish orphanage run by Janusz Korczak had been ordered for that morning. The children were to have been taken away alone. He had the chance to save himself, and it was only with difficulty that he persuaded the Germans to take him too. He had spent long years of his life with children and now, on this last journey, he could not leave them alone. He wanted to ease things for them. He told the orphans they were going out in to the country, so they ought to be cheerful. At last they would be able to exchange the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, woods full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two, nicely dressed and in a happy mood. The little column was led by an SS man..."

— Władysław Szpilman,  The Pianist ^[10]

Some time after, there were rumors that the trains had been diverted and that Korczak and the children had survived. There was, however, no basis to these stories. Most likely, Korczak, along with Wilczyńska and most of the children, was killed in a gas chamber upon their arrival at Treblinka.

A differing account of Korczak's death is given in Mary Berg's Warsaw Ghetto diary:

Dr. Janusz Korczak’s children’s home is empty now. A few days ago we all stood at the window and watched the Germans surround the houses. Rows of children, holding each other by their little hands, began to walk out of the doorway. There were tiny tots of two or three years among them, while the oldest ones were perhaps thirteen. Each child carried the little bundle in his hand. All of them wore white aprons. They walked in ranks of two, calm, and even smiling. They had not the slightest foreboding of their fate. At the end of the procession marched Dr. Korczak, who saw to it that the children did not walk on the sidewalk.”

— Mary Berg,  The Diary ^[11]

There is a cenotaph for him at the Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.

Writings[link]

Korczak's best known writing is his fiction and pedagogy, and his most popular works have been widely translated. His main pedagogical texts have been translated into English, but of his fiction, as of 2011 only King Matt the First has been translated into English, though Kaytek the Wizard is scheduled for a June, 2012 release in English.

The copyright to all works by Korczak was acquired by The Polish Book Institute as of January 8, 2010.^[12] As of late 2011, they have embarked on an initiative to publish or re-publish many of Korczak's books, both in Polish and in other languages.^[13] As Korczak died in 1942, it is likely that his works will be available in the public domain as of January 1, 2013.^[14]

Korczak's overall literary oeuvre covers the period 1896 to August 8, 1942. It comprises works for both children and adults, and includes literary pieces, social journalism, articles and pedagogical essays, together with some scrappy unpublished work, in all totaling over twenty books, over 1,400 texts published in around 100 publications, and around 300 texts in manuscript or typescript form. A complete edition of his works is planned for 2012.^[15]

Children's books[link]

Korczak often employed the form of the fairy tale in order to actually prepare his young readers for the dilemmas and difficulties of real adult life, and the need to take responsible decisions.

In the 1923 King Matt the First (Król Maciuś Pierwszy) and its sequel King Matt on the Desert Island (Król Maciuś na wyspie bezludnej) Korczak depicted a child prince who is catapulted to the throne by the sudden death of his father, and who must learn from various mistakes.

He tries to read and answer all his mail by himself and finds that the volume is too much and he needs to rely on secretaries; he is exasperated with his ministers and has them arrested, but soon realises that he does not know enough to govern by himself, and is forced to release the ministers and institute constitutional monarchy; when a war breaks out he does not accept being shut up in his palace, but slips away and joins up, pretending to be a peasant boy - and narrowly avoids becoming a POW; he takes the offer of a friendly journalist to publish for him a "royal paper" -and finds much later that he gets carefully edited news and that the journalist is covering up the gross corruption of the young king's best friend; he tries to organise the children of all the world to hold processions and demand their rights - and ends up antagonising other kings; he falls in love with a black African princess and outrages racist opinion (by modern standards, however, Korczak's depiction of blacks is itself not completely free of stereotypes which were current at the time of writing); finally, he is overthrown by the invasion of three foreign armies and exiled to a desert island, where he must come to terms with reality - and finally does.

The later Kajtuś the Wizard (Kajtuś czarodziej) (1935) anticipated Harry Potter in depicting a schoolboy who gains magic powers, and it was very popular during the 1930s, both in Polish and in translation to several other languages. Kajtuś has, however, a far more difficult path than Harry Potter: he has no Hogwarts-type School of Magic where he could be taught by expert mages, but must learn to use and control his powers all by himself - and most importantly, to learn his limitations.

Pedagogical books[link]

In his pedagogical works, Korczak shares much of his experience dealing with difficult children. Korczak's ideas were further developed by many other pedagogues such as Simon Soloveychik and Erich Dauzenroth.

Partial Bibliography[link]

Fiction[link]

• Children of the Streets (Dzieci ulicy, Warsaw 1901)
• Fiddle-Faddle (Koszałki opałki, Warsaw 1905)
• Child of the Drawing Room (Dziecko salonu, Warsaw 1906, 2nd edition 1927) – partially autobiographical
• Mośki, Joski i Srule (Warsaw 1910)
• Józki, Jaśki i Franki (Warsaw 1911)
• Fame (Sława, Warsaw 1913, corrected 1935 and 1937)
• Bobo (Warsaw 1914)
• King Matt the First (Król Maciuś Pierwszy, Warsaw 1923) ISBN 1-56512-442-1
• King Matt on a Deserted Island (Król Maciuś na wyspie bezludnej, Warsaw 1923)
• Bankruptcy of Little Jack (Bankructwo małego Dżeka, Warsaw 1924)
• When I Am Little Again (Kiedy znów będę mały, Warsaw 1925)
• Senat szaleńców, humoreska ponura (a screenplay for the Ateneum theatre in Warsaw 1931)
• Kaytek the Wizard (Kajtuś czarodziej, Warsaw 1935)

Pedagogical books[link]

• Momenty wychowawcze (Warsaw, 1919, 2nd edition 1924)
• How to Love a Child (Jak kochać dziecko, Warsaw 1919, 2nd edition 1920 as Jak kochać dzieci)
• The Child's Right to Respect (Prawo dziecka do szacunku, Warsaw, 1929)
• Playful pedagogy (Pedagogika żartobliwa, Warsaw, 1939)

Other books[link]

• Diary (Pamiętnik, Warsaw, 1958)
• Fragmenty Utworów (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Nasza Księgarnia, 1978). Excerpts translated by Adele L. Milch were published in Moment Magazine, November 1979.
• The Stubborn Boy: The Life of Pasteur (Warsaw, 1935)

In popular culture[link]

In addition to theater, opera, TV, and film adaptations of his works, such as King Matt the First and Kaytek the Wizard, there have been a number of works about Korczak, inspired by him, or featuring him as a character.

Books:

• Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli (2003) – Doctor Korczak runs an orphanage in Warsaw where the main character often visits him
• Moshe en Reizele (Mosje and Reizele) by Karlijn Stoffels (2004) – Mosje is sent to live in Korczak's orphanage, where he falls in love with Reizele. Set in the period 1939-1942. Original Dutch, German translation available. No English version as of 2009^[update].
• Once by Morris Gleitzman (2005), partly inspired by Korczak, featuring a character modeled after him
• Kindling by Alberto Valis (Felici Editori, 2011), Italian thriller novel. The life of Korczak through the voice of a Warsaw ghetto's orphan. As of 2011^[update], no English translation.
• The Time Tunnel - Kingdom of the Children by Galila Ron-Feder-Amit (2007) is an Israeli children's book in the Time Tunnel series that takes place in Korczak's orphanage.

Stage plays:

• Dr Korczak and the Children by Erwin Sylvanus (1957)
• Korczak's Children by Jeffrey Hatcher (2003)
• Dr Korczak's Example by David Greig (2001)^[16]
• The Children's Republic by Hannah Moscovitch (2009)

Musicals:

• Korczak by Nick Stimson and Chris Williams (2011) presented by Youth Music Theatre: UK at the Rose Theatre, Kingston in August 2011.

Film:

• Korczak, written by Agnieszka Holland, directed by Andrzej Wajda (1990)

Television:

• Studio 4: Dr Korczak and the Children - BBC adaptation of Sylvanus's play, written and directed by Rudolph Cartier (13 March 1962)

Music:

• Korczak's Orphans – opera, music by Adam Silverman, libretto by Susan Gubernat (2003)
• Kaddish – long poem/song by Aleksandr Galich (1970)

Astronomy:

• Asteroid 2163 Korczak is named in his honor.

References[link]