by Yitzhak Arad
The Treblinka death camp was located in the northeast section of the General Government, not far from Malkinia, a town and station on the main railway, Warsaw-Bialystok, and close to the railway Malkinia-Siedlce. It was built in a thinly populated area near the village of Wolka Okranglik, some 4 km from Treblinka village and train station. The site chosen for the camp was wooded and naturally concealed from both the Malkinia-Kosov road to its north and the Malkinia-Siedlce railway, which ran to its west. Near the camp’s southwest boundary, a rail spur connected Treblinka station with a gravel quarry in the region that had been worked before the war. In the spring of 1941, the Germans decided to exploit the quarry for raw materials for the fortifications then being constructed on the Soviet-German line of demarcation, and in the summer of that year they established Treblinka I penal camp, to which they brought 1,000–1,200 Polish and Jewish detainees for forced labor. This camp, like the entire region, was under the authority of the Warsaw area SS and Police Leader (SSPF).
In late April or early May 1942, an SS team arrived in the Treblinka area, toured the region, and determined the site where a death camp would be erected.1 The plan of the camp was almost identical to Sobibor, but with some improvements. The construction of the death camp began in late May/early June 1942. The contractors were the German construction firms Schönbronn of Leipzig and Schmidt-Münstermann. In charge of the construction of Treblinka was SS Obersturmführer Richard Thomalla, who had completed his building mission in Sobibor and had been replaced there by Stangl in April 1942. Technical assistance in the erection of the gas chambers was also made available.
Administration and Staff Living Area
1. Entrance to the camp and Seidel Street
2. Guard’s room near the entrance
3. SS living quarters
4. Arms storeroom
5. Gasoline pump and storerooms
6. Garage
7. Entrance gate to Station square
8. Camp Command and Stangl’s living quarters
9. Services for SS—barber, sick bay, dentist
10. Living quarters of domestic staff (Polish and Ukrainian girls)
11. Bakery
12. Foodstore and supply storeroom
13. The barrack in which “gold Jews” worked
14. Ukrainian living quarters—“Max Bialas barracks”
15. Zoo
16. Stables, chicken coop, pig pen
17. Living quarters for capos, women, tailor shop, shoe-repairs, carpentry shop, and sickroom
18. Prisoners’ kitchen
19. Living quarters for men prisoners, prisoners’ laundry and tool room
20. Locksmithy and smithy
21. Latrine
22. Roll-call square
Reception Area
23. Station platform (ramp) and square
24. Storeroom for belongings taken from victims—disguised as a station
25. Deportation square
26. Barrack in which the women undressed and relinquished their valuables
27. Room in which women’s hair was cut
28. Barrack in which men undressed, also used as a storeroom
29. Reception square
30. “Lazarett”—execution site
31. “The Tube”—the approach to the gas chambers
Extermination Area
32. New gas champters (10 chambers)
33. Old gas chambers (3 chambers)
34. Burial pits
35. “The Roasts” for burning bodies
36. Prisoners’ living quarters, kichen, and latrines
SS Unterscharführer Erwin Herman Lambert, a former foreman of a building team in the euthanasia program, testified:
I and Hengs [a euthanasia man] went to Treblinka by car. SS Hauptsturmführer Richard Thomalla was the camp commander. The Treblinka camp was still in the process of construction. I was attached to a building team there. Thomalla was there for a limited time only and conducted the construction work of the extermination camp. During that time no extermination actions were carried out. Thomalla was in Treblinka for about four to eight weeks. Then Dr. Eberl arrived as camp commander. Under his direction the extermination Aktionen of the Jews began.2
The SS and Police Leader of the Warsaw district was responsible for the erection of the camp. Polish and Jewish prisoners from Treblinka penal camp, as well as Jews from neighboring towns, were provided for labor. Along with the building construction—including the gas chambers, barracks, and stores—work commenced on a railroad spur running from the nearby rail line into the camp; shortly thereafter, a station platform was constructed.
None of the Jewish workers who were employed at the building of the camp survived. Jan Sulkowski, a Polish prisoner from Treblinka penal camp who was engaged in building the death camp, stated:
The Germans killed the Jews either by beating them or by shooting them. I witnessed cases where the SS-men . . . during the felling of forests, forced Jews to stand beneath the trees which were about to fall down. In both cases 4 Jews were thus killed. Besides, it often happened that the SS-men raided the huts of the Jewish workers and killed them in cold blood. . . . I was told by the SS-men that we were building a bath-house and it was after a considerable time that I realized that we were constructing gas-chambers.3
The death camp formed a rectangle, 600 × 400 meters, surrounded by two sets of fences and barbed-wire obstacles. The inner fence was 3 to 4 meters high and intertwined with tree branches that hid the camp from outside view. A second fence, some 40 to 50 meters from the first, included chains of antitank obstacles (“Spanish horses”) wrapped in barbed wire. The ground between the fences was left barren—devoid of any vegetation or possible hiding place—to facilitate observation by the guards. Fences also surrounded areas within the camp. In each corner of the camp, an 8-meter-high watchtower was constructed. An additional tower was built along the southern perimeter, between the two corner towers and near the gas chambers. It was later transferred to the center of the extermination area.
The camp was divided into three zones of nearly equal size: the living area (Wohnlager), the reception area (Auffanglager); and the extermination area (Totenlager). The living and reception areas were called the “Lower Camp,” while the extermination area was known as the “Upper Camp.”
The living area was in the northwest section of the camp. It comprised the living quarters for the German SS personnel and the Ukrainians, and other administration buildings—an office, an infirmary, stores, and workshops. Unlike Sobibor, the living quarters of the SS men were concentrated in one area. Part of this area, a square 100 × 100 meters, was set off by a barbed-wire fence. It contained three barracks forming a U, where the Jewish prisoners lived, workshops where they worked, and a roll-call square. At the far side of the square were about thirty toilets covered by a straw roof.
The reception area was in the southwest section of the camp and it was at that part of the camp that the transports of Jews first arrived. It included the train platform and the 300-meter railway spur. At the end of the railway spur was a wooden gate, wrapped with barbed wire intertwined with tree branches.
In front of the platform was a large structure where the victims’ belongings were stored. Aside from the platform and the rail spur, no facilities or signs were to be seen that could identify the site as a train station. Near the platform, north of the storehouse, was “Railway Station Square,” an open area, and past it a fenced-in area called “Transport Square” (Transportplarz) or “Undressing Square,” which was entered through a gate. This gate was where the men were separated from the women and children. Transport Square was flanked by two large hut barracks. In the left-hand barrack, the women and children undressed and deposited their money and valuables. The right-hand barrack served the men for the same purpose. South of Transport Square was “Sorting Square” (Sortierplatz), where the victims’ clothing and belongings were sorted and piled up for shipment out of the camp. At one end of Sorting Square, in the s
outheast corner of the camp, were large ditches for burying those victims who had died in the trains on their way to the camp.
The entrance gate to the camp was in the northwest section, near the railway. It was built of two wooden pillars, each decorated with a flower styled from metal and crowned by a small roof resting on the pillars. At night floodlights lit the entrance. Ukrainian guards and SS men were posted at the gate and at the guardhouse, which was close to it, twenty-four hours a day. The entrance gate served mainly the SS and Ukrainians; transports with Jews entered the camp by train.
The extermination area, or “Upper Camp,” as it was called by the Germans, was in the southeastern section; there the mass murders were carried out. This area was completely isolated from the rest of the camp by a wire fence camouflaged with branches, which prevented observation from the outside. The entrances were hidden by a special screen. The upper camp was approximately 200 × 250 meters.
The gas chambers were located inside the extermination area, in a massive brick building. During the camp’s first months of operation, there were three gas chambers, each 4 × 4 meters and 2.6 meters high, similar to the first gas chamber constructed in Sobibor. A room attached to the building contained a diesel engine, which introduced the poisonous carbon monoxide gas through pipes into the chambers, and a generator, which supplied electricity to the entire camp.
The entrance doors to the gas chambers opened onto a wooden corridor at the front of the building. Each of these doors was 1.8 meters high and 90 cm wide. The doors could be closed hermetically and locked from the outside. Inside the gas chambers, opposite each entrance door, was another door made of thick, strong wood beams, 2.5 meters wide and 1.8 meters high. These doors, too, were hermetically sealed. Inside the chambers the walls were covered with white tiles up to a certain height, and shower heads and piping crisscrossed the ceiling—all designed to maintain the illusion of a shower room. The piping actually served to carry the poison gas into the chambers. When the doors were closed, there was no lighting in the chambers.
East of the gas chambers, and close to them, were huge ditches for burying the dead. The ditches were 50 meters long, 25 meters wide, and 10 meters deep. They were dug by an excavator brought from the quarry at Treblinka penal camp, and by the prisoners. To facilitate the transport of bodies from the gas chambers to the ditches, a narrow-gauge railway was laid, with trolleys pushed by prisoners. South of the gas chambers, a barrack was erected for prisoners employed inside the extermination area. This barrack and a small surrounding yard were fenced with barbed wire; the entrance gate faced the gas chambers. The barrack served as living quarters, and included a kitchen and toilet. A watchtower and a guardroom were built in the center of the extermination area.
Transport Square in the Lower Camp was connected to the extermination area by the “tube,” or, as the Germans in Treblinka called it derisively, “the road to heaven” (Himmelstrasse). The “tube” was nearly 100 meters long and 4.5 to 5 meters wide. It began near the women’s undressing barrack, continued east and then south to the extermination area. It was fenced on both sides with barbed wire 2 meters high and intertwined with tree branches so that it was impossible to see in or out. The “tube” crossed a thin grove of trees, which continued eastward up to the camp fence. At the entrance to the “tube,” near the women’s undressing hut, a sign said: “To the Showers” (Zur Badeanstalt).4
Part of the building material and the equipment needed for constructing the camp were taken from the Warsaw ghetto workshops. Dr. Irmfried Eberl, who was in charge of constructing Treblinka, wrote to Dr. Heinz Auerswald on June 19 and 26 and on July 7, 1942, and demanded the immediate supply of various items required for the completion of the narrow-gauge railway and electrical installations.5
Unterscharführer Erich Fuchs, who took part in the construction of Treblinka, testified: “Subsequently I went to Treblinka. In this extermination camp I installed a generator which supplied electric light for the barracks. The work in Treblinka took me about three to four busy months. During my stay there transports of Jews who were gassed were coming in daily.”6
The camp’s main facilities for implementing the extermination of the Jews were completed in the middle of July 1942. The killings began on July 23, 1942, although construction work continued for months after.
6
Preparing for the Deportations
Organizing the deportation of the 2,284,000 Jews who, according to German data, lived in the General Government in hundreds of ghettos dispersed all over the country demanded thorough planning. The geographical dispersion of the Jewish ghettos, the location and killing capacities of the death camps, the available means of transport and their projected optimal use would all have to be considered.
In charge of planning and activating the deportations of Operation Reinhard was Hauptsturmführer Herman Höfle. The deportation orders were coordinated and channeled through SS authorities from Höfle’s office in Lublin, through the district SS and Police Leaders, down to the localities where the expulsions were to take place. In the first months of Operation Reinhard, the Jews in the General Government were under the jurisdiction of the German civilian administration. Therefore, the deportations required coordination of the SS authorities with the civilian officials. The SS chiefs of Operation Reinhard tried at first to keep the purpose of the deportations and the fate of the Jews secret—even from the German civilian authorities. The earliest known German document regarding any cooperation between SS authorities and civilian officials in the deportation of Jews in the framework of Operation Reinhard is a note written by Dr. Richard Türk, the head of the Department of Population Affairs and Welfare (Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge) in Lublin district. The document states:
Notice, Lublin, 17 III 1942, Ref (event) II, R/We
On March 4, 1942, I received a telegram from the government in Cracow, signed by Mr. [Friedrich] Siebert, the chief of the SS department, in which the concluding sentence reads as follows: I ask you to be helpful to the SS and Police Leader of Lublin in his actions.
On March 7 I received a telephone call from the government [in Cracow], from Major Regger, in which I was strictly requested, in connection with the resettlement of the Jews from Mielec to the Lublin district, to reach an agreement with the SS and Police Leader, and it stressed the highest importance of this agreement. . . . I arranged a conference with Hauptsturmführer Höfle for Monday, March 16, 1942, and it took place at 17.30. In the course of this conference, Höfle explained the following:
1. It would be appropriate if the transport of Jews that arrive in the Lublin district were split in the departure stations into those who are able to work and those who are not. If this division is impossible in the departure stations, eventually it should be considered to divide the transport in Lublin, according to the aforementioned point of view.
2. All the Jews incapable of work would arrive in Belzec, the final border station in the Zamosc region.
3. Hauptsturmführer Höfle is preparing the erection of a big camp, where the Jews capable of work will be held and divided according to their professions and from where they will be requested [for work].
4. Piaski will be cleared of Polish Jews and will become a concentration point for Jews arriving from the Reich.
5. In the meantime Trawniki will not be populated by Jews.
6. The Hauptsturmführer asks whether on the train section Deblin-Trawniki 60,000 Jews can be disembarked. After having been informed about the transports of Jews dispatched by us, Höfle announced that out of the 500 Jews who arrived from Suziec, those unable to work can be sorted out and sent to Belzec. . . .
In conclusion, he announced that every day he can receive four to five transports with 1,000 Jews each for the destination of Belzec station. These Jews would cross the border [of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union] and never return to the General Government.1
The initial plans of the Operation Reinhard staff were intended to thoroughly clear the w
hole General Government of Jews. Those fit for work, mainly craftsmen and skilled workers, were to be concentrated in labor camps in the Lublin district subordinate to the SS. All others were to be sent to the death camps. Concomitant with these deportations, Jews from Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would repopulate the empty ghettos in the Lublin district—until their turn came to be sent to the death camps. A report of Dr. Richard Türk dated April 7, 1942, states:
Routine talks about the limited accommodation possibilities along the railway of Deblin-Rejowiec-Belzec were and are being conducted with [authorized] competent representatives of the SS and Police Leader. Alternative possibilities were checked.
On the basis of my proposals the matter was cleared up. The number of Jews brought from the west will be equal to the number of local Jews deported.
The present situation of the settlement movement is that about 6,000 [Jews] arrived from the Reich; and from the district [of Lublin] 7,500 were deported, and from the city of Lublin another 18,000. . . .2
The deportation plan to the death camps was based on the administrative division of the General Government into five districts, each of which was divided into sub-districts. Each camp was intended to receive Jews from specific districts and sub-districts. The basis for planning the transports was the geographical proximity of a district or sub-district to the camp’s location, the principle of dividing the extermination activity equally and efficiently among the three camps, and the optimal exploitation of the railroad network. At times Jews from a particular sub-district were sent to a more distant extermination camp because train transportation there was faster and more convenient than to a nearer camp. The general deportation plan called for the Jews of the Lublin district to be deported to Belzec; after Sobibor was completed, however, they were deported there also. Jews from the Lvov district (eastern Galicia) and Cracow district (western Galicia) were sent to Belzec. Jews from Warsaw and Radom districts were to be sent to Treblinka and partly to Sobibor. This was the basic master plan that could and would be adapted to changing circumstances and conditions. On June 3, 1942, Hans Frank issued a directive to transfer all Jewish affairs from civilian authorities in the General Government to the SS and Security Police to simplify the deportations and their procedures and to avoid misunderstandings.3 From that point on, sole authority over the Jews and their fate in the General Government was in the hands of the SS.