The Treblinka Death Camp E-Book

Chris Webb

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 643

Beschreibung

A number of books have been written on the death camp of Treblinka, but "The Treblinka Death Camp. History, Biographies, Remembrance" is unique. Webb and Chocolaty present the definitive account of one of history's most infamous factories of death where approximately 800,000 people lost their lives. The Nazis who ran it, the Ukrainian guards and maids, the Jewish survivors and the Poles living in the camp's shadow – every angle is covered in this astonishingly comprehensive work. The book attempts to provide a Roll of Remembrance with biographies of the Jews who perished in the death camp as well as of those who escaped from Treblinka in individual efforts or as part of the mass prisoner uprising on August 2nd, 1943. It also includes unique and previously unpublished sketches of the camp's ramp area and gas chamber, drawn by the survivors.

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

For Artur Hojan

Dedicated to the memory of

Foreword

The Holocaust was a set of events that engulfed an entire continent. The Nazi occupation of Europe pursued Jews from Greece to the Soviet Union. The survivors have been scattered around the globe. In recent years the memory of these events has become a global discourse—there is a UN mandated remembrance day and the Holocaust has become a kind of moral touchstone which is held up as the central event of the twentieth century. As a consequence whenever one thinks of the Holocaust one inevitably thinks in terms of scale—of six million dead, of journeys of thousands of miles. The rhetoric of Holocaust studies—as attempts to understand the Holocaust have become defined—alsoemphasizethe enormity of the events with which we are grappling, we are constantly reminded of the idea that the Holocaust is both unrepresentable and unimaginable. Part of this rhetoric is the idea that the Final Solution operated on an industrial scale,and that the concentration camps need to be understood as factories of death. Within this epic memory it is the camp at Auschwitz that provides much of the iconography both through contemporary images (theunmistakabletower at the entrance of Auschwitz-Birkenau for example) and the images bequeathed by the memorial museum, the apparently endless stacks of human hair, or the piles of shoes and suitcases.

Reading Chris Webb's book on Treblinka one is somewhat paradoxically struck by the essential truth of that epic memory, but at the same time of some of its inherent distortions—by the degree to which Treblinka in some ways conforms and in some ways denies this epic memory. In Treblinka a meticulously constructed factory of death did emerge, where killing ultimately was the only function of the facility. This factory consumed, according to the numbers collected here,some 885 thousand lives. Such an observation is scarcely credible and one is tempted to simply throw up one's arms in despair and declare such events unimaginable.

Yet the detail brought together here, some of it for the first time in the English language, also provides a timely warning about surrendering to such rhetoric. This is not an unrepresentable or more precisely unimaginable horror. As Alan Confino argues in his recentFoundational Pasts, the FinalSolution was and is imaginable—precisely because it was imagined by its perpetrators. Chris Webb's reconstruction of Treblinka reminds us of this over and over again. This was a camp in which the technology of death was continuously refined and made more efficient. While the end result might have been a cleaner process, it was not one in which the perpetrators were distanced from their crimes because the means of carrying out those crimes had been considered, reconsidered; imagined and re-imagined, over and over again.

One is also reminded in Webb's book of another, at times neglected reality of the Holocaust. Despite the implications of the epic memory I described, the Final Solution did not take place on another planet. Despite the desires of the perpetrators to keep their crimes secret—the building of an imaginary train station at Treblinka being themost obvious indicator of that—they were not. Although the reality of what was occurring in the death camps might have been obscured,these places were public spaces with which local populations engaged in a variety of ways—some of which are testified to here.

And despite the scale of the death toll, one is also reminded by Webb's book just how small places like Treblinka were and as such that the seismic events of the Holocaust were in many ways rather intimate too. Covering just a few hundred squaremeters, and with a largely identifiable staff, Treblinka was a place in which victims and perpetrators confronted one another repeatedly. This intimacy is reconstructed here and as such Treblinka emerges as very much representable. These are epic events, but they took place in spaces that are only too conceivable in the human imagination.

And it was of course because Treblinka was constructed on a small scale that in the aftermath ofAktion Reinhardtthe camp could be dismantled and disguised. One of the consequences of this is that to visit Treblinka today is to visit a space in which there are no visible remains from the camp itself. Treblinka therefore stands, perhaps more than any other place, as representative of the void which the Final Solution represents.

Yet it is thanks to works like Webb's and the scholarship that he represents here that we can know something of what happened there. We can hear the voices of surviving victims, and of course of the perpetrators themselves. We can in that sense win a small victory over the Nazis'efforts to destroy and to expunge Jews and Judaism from this world, and of course to expunge the memory of their own destructiveness. We can, thanks to collections of material like this, continue to proclaim that, in the words of Primo Levi, it has been. We can, however imperfectly, see into the void.

Professor Tom Lawson

Northumbria University

Authors'Introduction

TreblinkaDeath Camp—History, Biographies, Remembranceis the culmination of manyyears’interest and research on the third and biggest of the threeAktion Reinhardtdeath camps in Nazi-occupied Poland, stimulated by the publication in 1967 of Jean-Francois Steiner's controversial bookTreblinka,published in London by Weidenfeld & Nicholson and in New York by Simon & Schuster. An edition in Slovakian was published a year later by Obzor in Bratislava.

Within the pages of this book the history of the Treblinka camp is painstakingly reconstructed—fromits construction in early summer 1942 to its final liquidation in the autumn of 1943. During that short period of time, no more than fifteen months, approximately 900,000 Jews were deported to the camp from the big Polish ghettos of Warsaw and Białystok, as well as from the districts of Lublin and Radom, and from as far afield as Austria, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Salonika,a part of former Czechoslovakia(Reichsprotektorat Böhmen/Mähren―Bohemia and Moravia) and Vilna in theReichskommissariatOstland(Lithuania). They were gassed and their bodies cremated on open air pyres.

Of these several hundred thousand victims deportedto Treblinka, very few survived. The experiences of these few are recounted here partly in their own words in post-war testimony, and uniquely in the authors'correspondence and personal interviews with the last survivors of Treblinka, Kalman Teigman, Eliahu Rosenberg, Samuel Willenberg, Pinchas Epstein, and Edi Weinstein. The debt owed to them and to their families for agreeing to meet and assist with our research, and in doing so reopening unimaginably painful memories, cannot be adequately repaid. This book is our modest attempt to honor both their courage and memory. At the time of writing (2014) only Samuel Willenberg is still alive.

There are several other people to whom we also owe a debt of thanks for their encouragement and invaluable assistance in producing this book. First on the list is Michael Tregenza, the British historian based in Lublin, Poland, who has our deep gratitude for reading and copy-editing the entire manuscript, and for making invaluable suggestions and important additions to the text. His knowledge ofAktion Reinhardtand its personnel is second to none.

We would also like to warmly thank members of the ARC (Aktion ReinhardtCamps) group who visited Treblinka in 2002 and subsequently established the website www.deathcamps.org. These include Michael Peters from Germany who undertook some sterling research on T4/ Treblinka personnel and Peter Laponder from South Africa, both of whom built models of the Treblinka death camp. Also from the ARC group, we wish to express our gratitude to Robert Kuwalek and Lukasz Biedka (Poland),Dr.Robin O'Neil (UK), and the late Billy Rutherford (UK), another talented model-maker.

A vital source of knowledge for this book has been the Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team (H.E.A.R.T.), and especially its website www.holocaustresearchproject.org, co-founded in 2006 by Chris Webb and Carmelo Lisciotto. H.E.A.R.T. has contributed to a number of television programs concerning the Holocaust and given lectures at universities on a wide range of Holocaust-related subjects.

Our thanks also go toDr.Matthew Feldman from Teesside University in the UK for his constant support, guidance and friendship throughout the development of this book. Also in the UK, Sir Martin Gilbert, CBE, PC, kindly donated maps from his collection to aid our research. In Poland, Edward Kopówka, responsible for the Treblinka memorial site, has our thanks for acting as our guide during various research visits to Treblinka. We are also grateful to Zvika Oren, Judy Grossman and Noam Rachmilevitch at the Ghetto Fighters'Museum in Western Galilee, and Shaul Ferrero at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem for their assistance.

Michael Grabher, author ofIrmfried Eberl—‘Euthanasie’-Arzt und Kommandant vonTreblinka(Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2006) has our thanks for assistance with correspondence between Eberl and his wife. Alexander Abdo at the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Wiesbaden provided copies of this correspondence.

A number of institutions and archives must be thanked for their cooperation: the Bundesarchiv in Berlin-Lichterfelde, Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw; National Archive in Prague-Chodovec; National Archive and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, DC, National Archives at Kew (London); and the Weiner Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, also in London.

Michal Chocholatý extends his personal thanks to his friend Jiří Strnad fromtheCzech Republicwhoaccompaniedhim on some of the visits to Israel to interview Treblinka survivors and who has been his travelling partner on research trips to Austria, France, Germany, Israel, and Poland.

On a sad note, Chris Webb personally dedicates this book to his friend and colleague, Artur Hojan from Koscian, Poland, an expert on Nazi ‘euthanasia’and the Chełmno death camp in his home district, the former Reichsgau Wartheland, who helped with some of the Polish information for this book. Artur left his home on the evening of 1 December 2013 and disappeared. His body was recovered from a nearby canal on 12 February 2014.

He was taken from us in the prime of life and may he rest in peace.

Chris WebbMichal Chocholatý

Heathfield,Plzeň (Pilsen),

United KingdomCzech Republic

March, 2014

Table of Contents

Foreword

Authors' Introduction

Abbreviations used in the footnotes

Preface ‘Aktion Reinhardt’ An Overview

Part I The hell called Treblinka

Chapter 1 Penal labor camp: Treblinka I

Chapter 2 Construction of the death camp: Treblinka II

Chapter 3 Initial phase under Dr. Eberl: July–August 1942

Chapter 4 Chaos and Reorganization

Chapter 5 Industrialized mass murder: September–December 1942

Chapter 6 Deceptions and diversions: Late 1942–early 1943

Chapter 7 Visit by the Reichsführer-SS: Orders to erase evidence of crimes

Chapter 8 Jewish work brigades

Chapter 9 The camp revolt: 2 August 1943

Chapter 10 The end of Treblinka and Aktion Reinhardt: August–November 1943

Part II Survivors, victims and perpetrators

Chapter 11 Interviews with Treblinka survivors

Chapter 12 Wartime reports about the death camp

Chapter 13 Transports and death toll

Chapter 14 Treblinka war crimes trials

Chapter 15 From Trawniki to Treblinka

Chapter 16 The real ‘Ivan the Terrible’

Chapter 17 Roll of Remembrance: Jewish survivors and victims

Chapter 18 The Perpetrators

Postscriptum Lublin concentration camp (Majdanek) A part of Aktion Reinhardt?

Supplementary documents

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

IIustrations and Sources

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Abbreviationsused in the footnotes

Abt.Abteilung (Section)

Auß.Außenstelle (Branch Office)

Bd.Band (Volume)

BABundesarchiv(Federal Archive)

Coll.Collection

GFHGhetto Fighters'House

HStAHauptstaatsarchiv (Main State Archive)

HStA(H)Hauptstaatsarchiv (Hessen)—Main State Archive(Hesse)

IPNIzbaPamięci Narodowej(Institute of National Memory)

OSI/DJOffice for SpecialInvestigations at the Departmentof Justice, Washington, DC

RGRecord Group

USHMMUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum

YVAYad Vashem Archive

Preface‘Aktion Reinhardt’An Overview

Aktion Reinhardt—also known asEinsatz Reinhardt—was the code name for the extermination of primarily Polish Jewry from the formerGeneralgouvernementand the Białystok area. The term was used in remembrance ofSS-ObergruppenführerReinhard Heydrich, the coordinator of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’(Endlösung der Judenfrage)—the extermination of the Jews living in the European countries occupied by German troops during the Second World War

On May 27, 1942, in a suburb of Prague, Jozef Gabčíkand Jan Kubiš,members of the Czech resistance, ambushed Heydrichin his car while he was en—route from his home in Panenské Březany to his office in Prague. Heydrichdied from his wounds at Bulovka Hospital on4 June 1942.[1]

Four days after his death, about 1,000 Jews left Prague in a single train which was designated‘AaH’(Attentat auf Heydrich—Assassination of Heydrich). This transport was officially destined for Ujazdów in the Lublin district, Poland, but was gassed at the Bełżec death camp in the far south-eastern corner of the Lublin District. The members of Odilo Globocnik's resettlement staff henceforward dedicated the murder program to Heydrich's memory under the code nameEinsatz Reinhardt.[2]

The head ofAktion ReinhardtwasSS-BrigadeführerOdilo Globocnik,the SS and Police Chief of the Lublin District, appointed to this task byReichsführer-SSHeinrich Himmler. At the Führer's Headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia (Kętrzyn in present day Poland) on October 13, 1941, Heinrich Himmler, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krügerand Odilo Globocnikmet at a conference during which Globocnikwasauthorizedto build a death camp at Bełżec in the far south-eastern corner of the Lublin District of theGeneralgouvernement. This was to be the first death camp constructed with static gas chambers, although the first mass extermination camp in the east, at Kulmhof in theReichsgau Wartheland(to-day, Chełmnonad Neremin Poland) used gas vans from early December 1941.[3]

On January 20, 1942, at a villa in the Wannsee suburb of Berlin, Heydrichorganized a conference on the‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe’. The conference had been postponed fromDecember 8, 1941, as Heydrichwrote to one of the participants, Otto Hoffman, ‘on account of events in which some of the invited gentlemen were concerned’.[4]This meant the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day and the entry of the United States into the war.

Those who attended the Wannsee Conference included the leading officials of the relevant ministries, senior representatives of the German authorities in the occupied countries, and senior members of the SS, including Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, and Adolf Eichmann, head of Department IV B4, the sub-section of the Gestapo dealing with Jewish affairs.

*

Odilo Lothario Globocnikwas born on 21 April 1904 in Trieste, the son of an Austro-Slovene family, and a construction engineer by trade. In 1930, he joined the Nazi party in Carinthia, Austria, and after the banning of the Nazi Party in Austria in 1934, earned a reputation as one of the most radical leaders of its underground cells. In 1933, Globocnikjoined the SS, which was also a prohibited organization in Austria since 1934, and was appointed deputy Party District Leader(Stellvertretender Gauleiter).[5]

After serving several short terms of imprisonment for illegal activities on behalf of the Nazis, he emerged as a key figure in the pre-Anschlussplans for Austria, serving as a key liaison figure between Adolf Hitlerand the leading pro-Nazi Austrians.[6]

After theAnschlussof March 1938, Globocnik's star continued to rise and on May 24 he was appointed to the coveted key position of Party District Leader(Gauleiter)of Vienna. His tenure was short-lived, however, and onJanuary 30, 1939 he was dismissed from this lofty position for corruption, illegal speculation in foreign exchange and tax evasion—all on a grand scale.[7]

After demotion to a lowly SS rank and undergoing basic military training with anSS-Standarte, he took part with his unit in the invasion of Poland. Eventually pardoned by Himmler, who needed such unscrupulous characters for future ‘unsavory plans’, Globocnikwas appointed to the post of SS and Police Leader(SS-und Polizeiführer)of the Lublin District in theGeneralgouvernementonNovember 9, 1939.

In Lublin, Globocniksurrounded himself with a number of his fellow Austrians, SS-officers like Herman Julius Höfle, born in Salzburg on June 19, 1911. Höflebecame Globocnik's deputy inAktion Reinhardt, responsible for personnel and the organization of Jewish deportations, the extermination camps and the re-utilization of the victim's possessions and valuables. Höflewas later to playa significant role in mass deportationAktionenin Warsaw and Białystok. Ernst Lerchfrom Klagenfurt became Globocnik's closest confidante and adjutant. Georg Michalsen, a Silesian fromOppeln, was another adjutant and he, too, participated with Höflein the deportation of Jews from the ghettos in Warsaw and Białystok. Another, early member of this group was Amon Göthwho cleared theKraków,Tarnów,and Zamośćghettos, and later became notorious asCommandant of the Płaszów labor camp near Kraków.[8]

The headquarters ofAktion Reinhardtwas located in the ‘Julius Schreck Barracks’(Julius-Schreck-Kaserne)atLitauer-Straße 11, a former Polish school close to the city center in Lublin, where Höflenot only worked but also lived in a small apartment. Also located in Lublin were the buildings in which the belongings and valuables seized from the Jews were stored: the former Catholic Action(Katholische Aktion)building onChopin-Straße, and in prewar aircraft hangers on the Old Airfield(Alter Flugplatz)on the south-eastern outskirts of Lublin.[9]

The most notorious member ofAktion ReinhardtwasSS-Obersturmführer/KriminalinspektorChristian Wirth, the first commandant of the Bełżec death camp and later Inspector of the SS-Sonderkommandos ofAktion Reinhardt.Before his transfer to Poland, Wirthhad been a leading figure in‘Aktion T4,’the extermination of the mentally and physically disabled in six so-called ‘euthanasia’ killing centers in the Reich.

The role of the ‘T4’ euthanasia program was fundamental to the execution ofAktion Reinhardtbecause the great majority of the staff in the death camps served their ‘apprenticeships’ in mass murder at the euthanasia institutes of Bernburg, Brandenburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim and Pirna-Sonnenstein where the victims had been murdered in gas chambers using CO gas from steel cylinders. The senior officers in bothAktion T4andAktion Reinhardtwere all police officers with equivalent SS ranks, and with Himmler's approval SS-NCO's had emptied the gas chambers and cremated the bodies of the victims in portable furnaces. The SS-men performed this work wearing civilian clothes because Himmlerdid not want the possibility to arise of the public becoming aware of the participation of the SS in the killing.

DuringAktion Reinhardtthe SS authorities also supplemented the forces guarding the death camps by employing former Red Army troops who had been captured or had surrendered to the Germans, mostly ethnic Germans(Volksdeutsche)from the Ukraine, the Baltic States and the Volga region of Russia who were trained in an SS camp in the village of Trawniki, 25 km south-east of Lublin. The majority were already anti-Semitic (equating Bolsheviks with Jews) and were ideally suited to the persecution and extermination of Jews.

On November 1, 1941, construction of the firstAktion Reinhardtdeath camp began near the village of Bełżec, 125 km south-east of Lublin, and became operational in mid-March 1942. Construction of the second camp, at Sobibór, between the cities of Włodawa and Chełm on the River Bug, north-east of Lublin, came into operation at the end of April 1942. The third and last of these camps was located near the railroad station in Treblinka,[10]about 100 km north-east of Warsaw. All three camps shared some common vital facts: they were all situated on or close to main railway lines for the speedy delivery of the victims to their deaths, and they were located in sparsely-populated regions. The true fate of the Jews was initially hidden from them by announcing that they were being ‘transported to the east for resettlement and work’. TheAktion Reinhardtdeath camps were very similar in layout, each camp being an improvement on its predecessor, and the ‘conveyor-belt’ extermination process developed at Bełżec by Christian Wirthwas implemented, improved and refined at the other two camps.

The personnel assigned toAktion Reinhardtcame from anumber of sources, SS and policemen who served under Globocnik's command in the Lublin district, other SS men and civilians drafted into the Aktion, and members of the ‘T4’ euthanasia program.[11]

Yitzhak Aradquotes in his book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka that a total of 450 men were assigned toAktion Reinhardt, including 92 from ‘T4’,[12]more recent research by the authors, however, has identified a slightly higher total of 98 men, of whom 56 are known to have served in Treblinka at one time or another. (See chapter18: members of the SS-garrison).

The Old Lublin Airfield was also used throughoutAktion Reinhardtas a mustering centerfor personnel transferred from the T4 ‘euthanasia’ institutions in the Reich, to the extermination of the Jews in theGeneralgouvernement.The SS-men, police and civilians thus transferred were usually met at the airfield by Wirthpersonally, on occasions accompanied by Reichleitnerfrom Sobibór and Stanglfrom Treblinka. According to witnesses, at these selections of personnel, all three officers woreSchutzpolizeiuniforms and none of them mentioned anything about their future employment or where they would be based. At the airfield depot the newcomers received Waffen-SSuniforms, provided by the SS-Garrison Administration(SS-Standortverwaltung)in Lublin, but without the SS runes on the right hand collar patches. The civilian employees from ‘T4’, especially the male psychiatric nurses among them, were sent first to the SS training camp at Trawniki for a two week basic military training course.[13]

The men selected in Lublin and distributed to the threeAktion Reinhardtdeath camps were augmented by a company-sized unit of about 120 black-uniformed auxiliary guards who had also been trained at the SS training camp in Trawniki—the so-called ‘Trawnikimen’(Trawnikimänner’),usually referred to as ‘Ukrainians’ because they were the majority.

Those who spoke fluent German were appointed platoon or senior platoon leaders—ZugführerorOberzugführer.[14]The rest were known asWachmänner(lit. guardsmen). A select few of theTrawnikimännerwere given other, special duties, including the maintenance and operation of the engines that pumped their poisonous exhaust fumes into the gas chambers. Among them were the infamous Ivan Marchenko(‘Ivan the Terrible’) and NikolayShalayevat the Treblinka death camp.

*

In the course ofAktion Reinhardtapproximately 1.6 million Jews were murdered in the death camps at Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka. Jewish property to the value of 178,045,960Reichsmark(RM) was seized by the SS, which represents the minimum known amount. Through the theft of large amounts of cash and valuables bySS-BrigadeführerGlobocnik, SS-men, policemen and guards, the true total will never be known.

TheAktion Reinhardtextermination operation ended officially in November 1943 and Himmlerordered Globocnik, who was by then the Higher SS and Police Leader)(Höhere SS-und Polizeiführer)for the Adriatic Coastal Region(Adriatisches Küstenland), based in Trieste, to produce a detailed ‘Balance Sheet’ for the murder program. Globocnikproduced the requested financial accounts and suggested that certain SS-officers should be suitably rewarded for their ‘invaluable contribution’ toAktion Reinhardt.Globocnikreceived Himmler's thanks ‘for his ‘services to the German people’, but made no mention of medals for any of Globocnik's subordinates.[15]

After completion of the extermination work in theGeneralgouvernement,most of the men who had served inAktion Reinhardtwere transferred to northern Italy where their headquarters was in a disused rice mill in the San Sabba suburb of the Adriatic port of Trieste(Risiera di San Sabba).Divided into three SS-units: R-I, R-II and R-III, they operated under the code designation ‘Operation R’(‘Einsatz R’),still under the command ofSS-ObersturmführerChristian Wirth. Their primary task was the round-up and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau of the surviving Italian Jews, and confiscation of their property and valuables.Einsatz Rwas simply a smaller version ofAktion Reinhardt. Additionally, Italian-Jewish mental patients were removed from their hospitals and sent to the T4 ‘euthanasia’ institution at SchlossHartheim in Austria for gassing. The units not engaged in these operations were assigned to security and anti-partisan patrols on the Istrian peninsula.

Wirthturned San Sabba into an interrogation and execution centerwhere not only Jews but also Italian and Yugoslavian partisans were tortured, beaten to death, or simply shot and their bodies cremated in a specially installed furnace in the courtyard.[16]The human ashes were dumped in the Adriatic Sea. There is also evidence that a gas van wasused in San Sabba.

*

The key members ofAktion Reinhardtmostly escaped justice. Christian Wirthand Franz Reichleitner(the secondCommandant of Sobibór death camp) were killed by partisans in northern Italy in 1944. Amon Göthwas tried and sentenced to death in Kraków in September 1946 for crimes committed in the forced labor camp in Płaszów (today a suburb of Kraków). Dr. Irmfried Eberl, the firstCommandant of Treblinka, committed suicide in a West German prison in 1948 while awaiting trial. Only Franz Stangl(the firstCommandant of Sobibór and secondCommandant of Treblinka)[17]and Kurt Franz,the last Commandant of Treblinka, were brought to trial. Both were found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment.

PartIThe hell called Treblinka

Chapter1Penal labor camp:Treblinka I

The village of Treblinka is located approximately 100 km north-east of Warsaw and approximately 4 km from the important railway junction of Małkinia Górna, which is mentioned in the BaedekerDas Generalgouvernment–Reisehandbuchas an important rail junction and former border station with the Soviet Union.[18]

In the bookby Vasily Grossman,The Treblinka Hell, the description of the countryside is very apt:

The terrain to the east of Warsaw along the Western Bug is an expanse of alternating sands and swamps, interspersed with evergreen and deciduous forests. The landscape is dreary and villages are rare. The narrow sandy roads where wheels sink up to the axle and walking is difficult are something for the traveler to avoid.

In the midst of this desolate country stands the small out-of-the-way station of Treblinka on the Siedlce railroad branch line. It is some one hundred kilometers from Warsaw and not far from Małkinia station where tracks from Warsaw, Białystok, Siedlce and Łomża meet.

Many of those who were brought to Treblinka in 1942 may havehad occasion to travel this way before the war. Staring out over the desolate landscape of pines, sand, more sand and again pines, scrubland, heather, unattractive station buildings and railroad crossings, the pre-war passenger might have allowed his bored gaze to pause for a moment on a single-track spur running from the station into the forest to disappear amid the dense pines. The spur led to a gravel pit where white sand was extracted for industrial purposes.[19]

In preparation for the Nazi attack on theSoviet Union in June 1941 the German authorities took over the gravel pit, and used the raw material for fortifications and other military purposes. After the gravel pit had been abandoned by theWehrmacht, theKreishauptmannin Sokołów Podlaski established a company for concrete products and the need arose for a cheap labor force to work in the gravel pit. Thus, the idea for creating a penal labor camp was born, with the approval of Dr. Ludwig Fischer,the civilian governor of Warsaw District. Later, this camp received the name of ‘Labor Camp Treblinka’(Arbeitslager Treblinka).

In the early phase the camp was designed exclusively as a place of deportation for ‘stubborn elements’ from the whole