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78 Treblinka (Holocaust: Reinhard)




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This article is from the Holocaust FAQ, by Ken McVay kmcvay@nizkor.org with numerous contributions by others.

78 Treblinka (Holocaust: Reinhard)

Treblinka, the third Reinhard camp, was located about fifty miles
northeast of Warsaw, and was established during June and July, 1942.
Killing began on July 23, with the Jews of the Warsaw and Radom
districts the victims. The design was similar to that described above,
for Sobibor.
(See http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/israeli/yad-vashem/yvs16.05 for
construction details) There were three gas chambers initially, each
4 meters by 4 meters in size. Ten more were built between the end of
August, 1942, and the beginning of October of the same year. Upon
their completion, an entire load of twenty railroad cars could be
gassed at the same time - roughly 2400 victims per day. A prisoner
describes the beginning of his journey to the camp:

"The first transport of 'deportees' left Malkinia on July 23,
1942, in the morning hours. ...It was loaded with Jews from the
Warsaw ghetto.

... The train was made up of sixty closed cars, crowded with
people. The car doors were locked from the outside and the air
apertures barred with barbed wire. ...It was hot, and most of
the people in the freight cars were in a faint." (Zabecki,
39-40, as cited in Arad, Belzec)

The killing was about to begin....

During this early period, before mid-August, 5,000 to 7,000 Jews
arrived in Treblinka every day. Then the situation changed, the
pace of transports increased, and there were days when 10,000 to
12,000 deportees arrived, including thousands who had died en
route and others in a state of exhaustion. This state of
affairs disrupted the "quiet welcome" designed to deceive the
deportees into believing they had arrived at a transit station
and that before continuing their journey to a labour camp they
must be disinfected. Blows and shooting were needed to force
those still alive but exhausted to descend from the freight cars
and proceed to the square and the undressing barracks.(Arad,
Belzec) Abrahman Goldfarb, who arrived at the camp on August
25th., relates:

When we reached Treblinka and the Germans opened the
freight-car doors, the scene was ghastly. The cars were full of
corpses. The bodies had been partially consumed by chlorine.
The stench from the cars caused those still alive to choke. The
Germans ordered everyone to disembark from the cars; those who
could were half-dead. SS and Ukrainians waiting nearby beat us
and shot at us ... (A. Goldfarb testimony, Yad Vashem Archives
0-3/1846, 12-13, as cited in Arad, Belzec)

Oskar Berger, who was brought to Treblinka on August 22,
described the scene: As we disembarked we witnessed a horrible
sight: hundreds of bodies lying all around. Piles of bundles,
clothes, valises, everything mixed together. SS soldiers,
Germans, and Ukrainians were standing on the roofs of barracks
and firing indiscriminately into the crowd. Men, women, and
children fell bleeding. The air was filled with screaming and
weeping. Those not wounded by the shooting were forced through
an open gate, jumping over the dead and wounded, to a square
fenced with barbed wire." (Kogon, 218, as cited in Arad, Belzec)

 

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