Treblinka labor camp

The Treblinka labor camp (also Treblinka I ) was a National Socialist labor camp near the town of Treblinka in Germany-occupied Poland . It existed from July 1941 to August 1944, during which time up to 1,200 (according to other sources up to 1,800) people were interned in the camp at the same time, most of them Poles and Jews . Of the total of around 20,000 people imprisoned during its existence, less than half survived the stay in the camp. The prisoners' labor was mainly exploited in the gravel pit directly next to the camp , in workshops on the camp grounds and on construction sites on the Bug River .

North of the labor camp was the Treblinka extermination camp (also called Treblinka II ) from July 1942 to November 1943 , after Auschwitz-Birkenau the camp with the most deaths during the Holocaust .

history

Official announcement for the establishment of the Treblinka I labor camp, 1941

The initiative to establish the labor camp went back to Ernst Gramß , a member of the Sokołów Podlaski District Council , who wanted to secure the production of gravel for road construction. Until September 1941, the camp, which was subordinate to the Warsaw SS and Police Leader, consisted of only a few prisoners, who were housed in the existing buildings of the gravel pit and who were mainly used to set up the labor camp. On November 15, 1941, the establishment of the labor camp was ordered retrospectively to September 1, in a notice written in German and Polish. It said u. a. that "anyone who violates a prohibition or requirement issued by a German authority in the General Government" can be sent to the labor camp for two to six months . For admission to the camp of the SS and Police Leader in the Warsaw District, which were Captain of Warsaw, the district magistrates of the district as well as the governor of the district authorized.

Most of the prisoners in the first year of the camp were Poles, but there were also some Jewish craftsmen from the area among the inmates. From the spring of 1942, prisoners from the labor camp were used to set up the extermination camp that was being built two kilometers further north.

With the beginning of the extermination campaign in the nearby Treblinka II camp , both the proportion of Jewish prisoners and the mortality in the camp rose sharply. Prisoners who died or were murdered due to the living and working conditions were replaced by newcomers from the extermination camp.

On July 23, 1944, shortly before the Red Army reached Treblinka, the camp was disbanded. The approximately 550 remaining Jewish workers led the Schutzstaffel (SS) into the forest and shot them there. Only a few specialists, whose skills the Germans still needed, were spared. The camp buildings were torn down or burned down.

Today there is a memorial site designed by Franciszek Strynkiewicz on the site of the labor camp , which, together with the site of the extermination camp , is looked after by the Muzeum Walki i Męczeństwa w Treblince ( German : Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom in Treblinka ) based in Kosów Lacki , which in turn is assigned to the Muzeum Regionalne w Siedlcach (Regional Museum Siedlce ) as a department . In addition to the gravel pit, the foundations of the prisoners' barracks and the remains of a swimming pool used by SS personnel have been preserved.

Location and structure

The site of the Treblinka I camp is located around four kilometers south of the town of Treblinka south of Małkinia , around 80 kilometers northeast of Warsaw . From the station Treblinka at the track Małkinia-Siedlce a leading branch line to the gravel pit and to the camp.

The 17 hectare labor camp was divided into two areas: the eastern, larger section contained the camp administration and the quarters of the guards, and the western part the prisoner barracks. This section of the camp was in turn divided into different, separate sectors for Jews, Polish women and Polish men. To the east of the camp was the gravel pit where the camp inmates worked. The camp was secured by watchtowers and a barbed wire fence over two meters high , and the area of the prisoners' barracks was also surrounded by a double barbed wire fence.

The camp staff consisted of SS men and Trawniki . The commandant of the camp was SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor van Eupen .

Relationship to the Treblinka extermination camp

When the third planned extermination camp of Aktion Reinhardt was chosen - the Treblinka extermination camp - the existence of the labor camp and in particular its connection to the railway network also played a role.

The two camps Treblinka I and Treblinka II were formally and organizationally independent of each other, but for pragmatic reasons there were relationships between them. The prisoners of the labor camp were used to build the extermination camp and prisoners for the labor camp were selected from the trains arriving at the extermination camp .

Due to the close proximity of the two camps, it was not hidden from the inmates of the labor camp what was going on in the extermination camp: The smell of the cremation of the corpses was also perceptible in the labor camp, as well as the fire and smoke of the cremation grates used in the extermination camp to destroy the corpses.

The initiators of the Treblinka uprising , during which prisoners from the extermination camp tried to destroy the camp and to flee from it on August 2, 1943, had originally planned to liberate the Treblinka labor camp after they had successfully escaped. Due to the fact that the uprising did not go as hoped - many buildings of the extermination camp remained intact, only a little more than fifty people managed to escape - this plan could not be implemented. The SS personnel from the extermination camp also called in personnel from the labor camp to help put down the uprising.

Web links

Treblinka labor camp on the Treblinka Museum website
Treblinka labor camp on deathcamps.org
List of labor camp guards

Individual evidence

^ Wolfgang Benz : Treblinka . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 408.
↑ Official Gazette for the Warsaw District, No. 11 12, dated December 16, 1941 (Online: page 1 , page 2 ; accessed March 26, 2013).
↑ James Edward Young: The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning . Yale University Press 1993; ISBN 0-300-05383-5 ; P. 186.
^ Yitzhak Arad: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987, ISBN 0-253-34293-7 ; P. 176 f.
↑ Jens Hoffmann: “You can't tell that”. Action 1005. How the Nazis removed the traces of their mass murders in Eastern Europe ( Konkret - Texts 46/47). KVV Konkret, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930786-53-4 ; P. 237.

52.617442 22.039765Coordinates: 52 ° 37 ′ 2.8 ″ N , 22 ° 2 ′ 23.2 ″ E

[1] Wolfgang Benz : Treblinka . In: Wolfgang Benz, Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 8: Riga, Warsaw, Vaivara, Kaunas, Płaszów, Kulmhof / Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. CH Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57237-1 , p. 408.

[2] Official Gazette for the Warsaw District, No. 11 12, dated December 16, 1941 (Online: page 1 , page 2 ; accessed March 26, 2013).

[3] James Edward Young: The Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning . Yale University Press 1993; ISBN 0-300-05383-5 ; P. 186.

[4] Yitzhak Arad: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps . Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987, ISBN 0-253-34293-7 ; P. 176 f.

[5] Jens Hoffmann: “You can't tell that”. Action 1005. How the Nazis removed the traces of their mass murders in Eastern Europe ( Konkret - Texts 46/47). KVV Konkret, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-930786-53-4 ; P. 237.